Portal:Utah/Selected biography
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Selected biography 1
Portal:Utah/Selected biography/1 Karl Malone (born July 24, 1963 in Bernice, Louisiana) is a former professional basketball player. He was nicknamed in college as the Mailman for his consistency ("the mailman always delivers"), winning the NBA Most Valuable Player award twice. Malone is generally considered one of the greatest power forwards in NBA history.
Malone spent his first 18 seasons (1985–2003) as the star player for the Utah Jazz. He then played one season (2003-04) for the Los Angeles Lakers before retiring from the game.
Malone's jersey was retired on March 23, 2006, when the Jazz hosted the Washington Wizards. He was also honored with the unveiling of a bronze statue outside the Delta Center next to one of teammate John Stockton, and the renaming of a portion of 100 South St. in Salt Lake City in his honor. The intersection where the Stockton and Malone statues stand is now the intersection of Stockton and Malone.
Selected biography 2
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Butch Cassidy (13 April 1866 - c. 1908?) was a notorious train and bank robber.
Robert LeRoy Parker was born in Beaver, Utah, to Maximillian Parker and Ann Campbell Gillies, English Mormon and Scottish immigrants to the Utah Territory. His parents were residents of Victoria Road, Preston, Lancashire but fled England due to religious persecution for their Mormon faith. He grew up on his parents' ranch near Circleville, Utah, some 215 miles south of Salt Lake City, Utah.
Parker left home during his early teens and, while working at a dairy farm, he fell in with Mike Cassidy, a horse thief and cattle rustler. He subsequently worked several ranches in addition to a brief stint as a butcher in Rock Springs, Wyoming, when he acquired the nickname "Butch", to which he soon appended the surname Cassidy in honor of his old friend and mentor. (A "Butch" is also the name given to a borrowed gun.)
Parker's first brush with the law was a petty affair. At the age of about 14 (c 1880) he made a long journey to a clothier's shop in another town only to find the place shut. So, letting himself in, he removed a pair of jeans and left an IOU to the effect that he would pay for it upon his next visit. However the clothier took down the details which Parker had included in the IOU and reported him. After a stubborn resistance to the resultant charges in court, he was acquitted despite his having broken into the premises.
Selected biography 3
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Brigham Young (June 1, 1801 – August 29, 1877) was the second prophet and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the first governor of the Utah Territory.
After the killing of Joseph Smith, Young became the de facto president of the church at Nauvoo, Illinois. Repeated conflict led Young to relocate his group of Latter-day Saints to a territory in what is now Utah; then part of Mexico. Young organized the journey that would take the faithful to Winter Quarters, Nebraska, in 1846, then to Utah's Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, a date now recognized as a Utah state holiday and known as Pioneer Day.
Shortly after the new Mormon colonies were brought into the United States through Mexican Cession, Young petitioned the U.S. Congress to create the State of Deseret. The Compromise of 1850 instead carved out Utah Territory, and Young was installed as governor. He was replaced as governor after the Utah War.
Selected biography 4
Portal:Utah/Selected biography/4 Loretta Young (January 6 1913 – August 12 2000) was an Academy Award-winning American actress.
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah as Gretchen Young, she moved with her family to Hollywood when she was three years old. Loretta and her sisters, Polly Ann Young and Elizabeth Jane Young (screen name Sally Blane), worked as child actresses, of which Loretta was the most successful. Young's first role was at the age of 3 in the silent film The Primrose Ring. The movie's star, Mae Murray, so fell in love with little Gretchen that she wanted to adopt her. Although her mother declined, Gretchen was allowed to live with Murray for two years.
Young made as many as seven or eight movies a year and won an Oscar in 1947 for her performance in The Farmer's Daughter. The same year she co-starred with Cary Grant and David Niven in The Bishop's Wife, a perennial favorite that still airs on television during the Christmas season and was later remade as The Preacher's Wife with Whitney Houston.
In 1949, Young received another Academy Award nomination (for Come to the Stable) and in 1953 appeared in her last film, It Happens Every Thursday. Moving to television, she hosted and starred in the well-received half hour anthology series The Loretta Young Show.
In 1935, Young had an affair with Clark Gable, who was married at the time, while on location for The Call of the Wild. During their relationship, Young became pregnant. Due to the moral codes placed on the film industry by religious and conservative political organizations, Young was forced to cover up her pregnancy in order to avoid damaging her career (as well as Gable's). Returning from a long "vacation" (during which she secretly gave birth to her daughter), Young announced that she had adopted the little girl.
Selected biography 5
Portal:Utah/Selected biography/5 Kim Peek (born November 11, 1951) is an individual diagnosed with Savant Syndrome with a photographic or eidetic memory and developmental disabilities, resulting from congenital brain abnormalities. He was the inspiration for the character of Raymond Babbit, played by Dustin Hoffman, in the movie Rain Man.
Kim Peek was born with macrocephaly, damage to the cerebellum, and, most importantly, agenesis of the corpus callosum, a condition in which the bundle of nerves that connects the two hemispheres of the brain is missing; in Peek's case, secondary connectors such as the anterior commissure are also missing. There is speculation that his neurons make other connections in the absence of a corpus callosum, which results in an increased memory capacity.
According to Peek's father, Fran, Peek was able to memorize things from the age of 16-20 months. He read books, memorized them, and then placed them upside down on the shelf to show that he had finished reading them, a practice he still maintains. He reads a page of text in about 10 seconds (about a book per hour) and, apparently, remembers everything he has read, memorizing vast amounts of information in subjects ranging from history and literature, geography, and numbers, to sports, music, and dates. He can recall some 12,000 books from memory. Peek can also do formidable calculations in his head, a skill that serves him well in his day job, where he prepares payroll worksheets.
Selected biography 6
Portal:Utah/Selected biography/6 J. Willard Marriott (September 17, 1900-August 13, 1985) was an American entrepreneur and businessman. He was the founder of Marriott International, the parent company of one of the world's largest hospitality, hotel chains and food services company. His company rose from a small root beer stand in Washington D.C. in 1927 to a chain of family restaurants by 1932, to his first motel in 1957. By the time he died, the Marriott company operated 1,400 restaurants and 143 hotels and resorts worldwide, earned USD $4.5 billion in revenue annually with 154,600 employees. The company's interests even extended to a line of cruise ships and theme parks
Selected biography 7
Portal:Utah/Selected biography/7 Fawn M. Brodie (September 15, 1915–January 10, 1981) was a biographer and professor of history at UCLA, best known for Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, a work of psychobiography, and No Man Knows My History, the first important non-hagiographic biography of Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism. She also wrote biographies of Thaddeus Stevens, Sir Richard Burton and Richard Nixon.
Brodie was the second of five children of Thomas E. and Fawn Brimhall McKay. Born in Ogden, Utah, she grew up in Huntsville, about ten miles east. Both her parents descended from families influential in early Mormonism. Her maternal grandfather, George H. Brimhall, was president of Brigham Young University. Her father, Thomas Evans McKay, was a bishop, president of the LDS Swiss-Austrian mission, and an assistant to the Council of the Twelve. Brodie's paternal uncle was David O. McKay. An Apostle in the LDS church when Brodie was born, he later became the ninth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Selected biography 8
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Jake Garn (born October 12, 1932) served as a U.S. Senator representing Utah from 1974 to 1993. Garn became the first sitting member of the United States Congress to fly in space when he flew aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery as a payload specialist during NASA mission STS-51-D (April 12-April 19, 1985). He is a member of the United States Republican Party.
Born in Richfield, Utah, Garn earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business and finance from the University of Utah in 1955. He also attended East High School, Clayton Middle School, and Uintah Elementary School.
Prior to his election to the Senate, Garn served on the Salt Lake City commission for four years and was elected Mayor in 1971. He was active in the Utah League of Cities and Towns and served as President in 1972. In 1974, he was First Vice President of the National League of Cities and served as Honorary President in 1975.
Garn was first elected to the Senate in 1974, succeeding retiring Republican Wallace Bennett. Garn was reelected to a second term in November 1980, receiving 74% of the vote, the largest victory in a statewide race in Utah history.
Selected biography 9
Portal:Utah/Selected biography/9 John Stockton (born March 26, 1962) is a former professional basketball player. He spent his entire career (1984–2003) as a point guard for the Utah Jazz of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Stockton is considered one of the NBA's greatest point guards ever. He averaged a career double-double, with 13.1 points and 10.5 assists per game. As of 2005, he held the NBA's records for career assists by a large margin (15,806) and career steals (3,265). He had five of the top six assists seasons in NBA history (the other belonging to Isiah Thomas). He holds the NBA record for the most seasons and consecutive games played with one team, and is third in total games played, behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Robert Parish. He missed only 22 games during his career, 18 of them in one season.
Stockton appeared in 10 All-Star games, and was named co-MVP of the game in 1993 with Jazz teammate Karl Malone. He played with the 1992 and 1996 US Olympic basketball teams, known as Dream Teams I and II, the first Olympic squads to feature NBA players.
He was named one of the 50 Greatest Players In NBA History in 1996. Stockton's career highlight came in Game 6 of the 1997 Western Conference Finals, in which he hit the winning shot over Houston's Charles Barkley to send the Jazz to its first NBA Finals.
Selected biography 10
Portal:Utah/Selected biography/10 Steve Young (born October 11, 1961 in Salt Lake City, Utah), is a former quarterback for the National Football League's San Francisco 49ers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Los Angeles Express of the short-lived United States Football League. He was named the Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl XXIX, and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005, the first left-handed quarterback to be so honored.
Young attended Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Connecticut. He earned 1978 All-FCIAC West Division First Team honors in his junior year, his first year starting at quarterback for the Cardinals. In 1979, he once again earned All-FCIAC West Division First Team honors, along with CIAC All-State honors, rushing for 13 touchdowns. In two seasons, he carried 267 times for 1,928 yards. Passing was always the second option; he completed only 41 percent of his throws for 1,220 yards.
Young played college football at Brigham Young University (Young is a lineal descendant of Brigham Young). Initially, he struggled at passing, and BYU's coaching staff considered watching him for defensive back because of his athleticism. However, he worked hard to improve his quarterbacking skills and eventually succeeded record-setting Jim McMahon as the Cougars' starting QB. Young's senior season 1983 was spectacular. He passed for 3,902 yards and 33 touchdowns in the regular season, and his 71.3% completion percentage set an NCAA single-season record.
Selected biography 11
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Brandon Flowers (born June 21, 1981) is the vocalist and keyboardist in the American alternative rock band The Killers.
Flowers was born in Las Vegas, Nevada and later raised in Nephi, Utah. In Nephi, he claims he was the only Smiths fan. Since Nephi was a little farm town of just 2,000 people, football was everything as Brandon played golf and listened to Elton John and The Cars. He grew up a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with four older sisters and an older brother. He begged his parents to return to Las Vegas and finally did at the age of fifteen to live with his aunt and attend Chaparral High School.
While listening to the radio in his car after his very first college class, Flowers heard the song "Changes" by David Bowie. He fell in love with the piece and realized he wanted to be part of the music industry. Teaching himself keyboards, he passed on college to take a job as a caddy at a private golf course, where he encountered a fellow music fan who is also a keyboard player. Together they formed the first workings of the band that would become Blush Response. Brandon began writing and recording original tunes with his band. The endeavor was short-lived, however, when the band booted Flowers in 2001 because he refused to move with the rest of them to Los Angeles, California.
After being dumped by Blush Response, Brandon worked as a bellhop at Gold Coast Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The bellhop job paid enough for him to buy CDs, a keyboard, and a 4-track recorder. After answering a "Musicians Wanted" ad in the Las Vegas Weekly with a guitarist looking for a vocalist in order to form a band, he hit it off with his new bandmate, Dave Keuning, in late 2001. The Killers were spawned shortly thereafter. By 2002, Ronnie Vannucci became the drummer and Mark Stoermer had become the bassist.
They played some of their early gigs at a gay drag club, called Tramps, in Las Vegas. The name "The Killers" came about when the band was watching New Order's music video for "Crystal," in which New Order was a fictitious band of perfecto called "The Killers." Flowers was inspired and felt the desire to be as perfect as (and ultimately becoming) "The Killers."
Selected biography 12
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Orson Scott Card (born August 24, 1951) is a prolific and best-selling author, working in numerous genres. He is best known for his novel Ender's Game and its many sequels. Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead were both awarded the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Card the only author (as of 2006) to win both of Science Fiction's top prizes in consecutive years.
His writing is dominated by detailed characterization and moral issues. As Card says, "We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness — the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction."
A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, some of his novels have stories explicitly drawn from scripture or church history. His religious and political beliefs have drawn the ire of some science fiction fans, making him a provocative figure within the genre.
Selected biography 13
Portal:Utah/Selected biography/13 Ken Jennings (born May 23, 1974) holds the record for the longest winning streak on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy!, as well as other records. Jennings won 74 games before he was defeated by challenger Nancy Zerg on his 75th appearance. His total earnings on Jeopardy! are US$ 3,022,700 ($2,520,700 in winnings, a $2,000 consolation prize on his 75th appearance, and $500,000 in the Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions). Jennings held the record for most winnings on any game show ever played until the end of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions (first aired on May 25, 2005), when he was displaced by Brad Rutter, who defeated Jennings in that tournament.
After winning, he began work on a book, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs, exploring, as its title implies, the world of American trivia.
Selected biography 14
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Thomas L. Kane (January 27, 1822 – December 26, 1883) was an American attorney, abolitionist, and military officer who was influential in the western migration of the Latter-day Saint movement and served as a Union Army colonel and general of volunteers in the American Civil War. He received a brevet promotion to major general for gallantry at the Battle of Gettysburg.
In March 1850, in the midst of debate over establishing Utah territory, Kane delivered an important lecture before the Philadelphia Historical Society. He described the religion of the Latter-day Saints, their conflicts with other settlers, and the desolation he witnessed during a visit to the recently abandoned Nauvoo, Illinois. He also described the Saint's westward trek. One thousand copies of the lecture, with associated notes and materials, were printed and distributed, primarily to members of the U.S. Congress and influential men in the Executive Branch. When Utah was granted a territorial government by Congress on September 9, 1850, Fillmore asked Kane to be the first governor. He declined and recommended Young. Throughout the 1850s, he promoted Utah statehood and defended the Church's interests at every opportunity.
In 1858, Kane helped prevent bloodshed by mediating a dispute between the Mormons and the federal government, known as the Utah War.
Selected biography 15
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David Zabriskie (born January 12, 1979 in Salt Lake City) is a professional road bicycle racer from the United States who rides for Team CSC. His main strength is individual time trials and his career highlights include stage wins in all three Grand Tour stage races, as well as the US National Time Trial Championship. Zabriskie is known for his quirky nature, including singing before stages and the interviews he does with fellow riders in the professional peloton which are posted on his homepage.
He became the third American ever to wear the leader's jersey at the 2005 Tour de France, after the three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond, and seven-time winner Lance Armstrong. George Hincapie and Floyd Landis became the fourth and fifth American in 2006. He is considered by some to be the heir-apparent to Armstrong as the greatest American cyclist.
Selected biography 16
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Karl Rove (born December 25, 1950) was Deputy Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush until his resignation on 31 August 2007. He has headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. For most of his career prior to his employment at the White House, Rove was a political consultant almost exclusively for Republican candidates.
His family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah in 1965 when Rove was entering high school. While at Olympus High School, he was elected student council president his junior and senior years.
Rove began his involvement in American politics in 1968. In a 2002 Deseret News interview, Rove explained, "I was the Olympus High chairman for (former United States Senator) Wallace F. Bennett's re-election campaign, where he was opposed by the dynamic, young, aggressive political science professor at the University of Utah, J.D. Williams." Bennett was reelected to a third six-year term. Through Rove's campaign involvement, Bennett's son, Bob Bennett — a future United States Senator from Utah - would become a friend. Williams would later become a mentor of Rove's.
In the fall of 1969, Rove entered the University of Utah as a political science major and joined the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.
Through the University's Hinckley Institute of Politics, Rove got an internship with the Utah Republican Party. That position and contacts from the 1968 Bennett campaign, helped Rove land a job in 1970 in Illinois, helping on the unsuccessful re-election campaign of Ralph Tyler Smith for Senate.
Selected biography 17
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Michael Leavitt (born February 11, 1951 in Cedar City, Utah) was the a 14th Governor of the state of Utah, the 10th Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and is currently the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
He was first elected to Governor in 1992, then he was re-elected in 1996 and in 2000 became only the second governor in Utah history to be re-elected to a third term. As Governor, he held leadership positions in national and regional organizations, such as the Council of State Governments, over which he presided for a year.
While governor, Leavitt and Roy Romer of Colorado were the two key founders of Western Governors University (WGU) one of the first exclusively online schools in the nation. In addition to Leavitt and Romer, seventeen others were signatory governors creating WGU as a non-profit private university.
On August 11, 2003, Governor Leavitt was nominated by President George W. Bush to be the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at a press conference in Aurora, Colorado. He was confirmed to this office on October 28, 2003 by a vote of 88-8 in the United States Senate. Leavitt resigned the Utah governor's office on November 5. He was sworn in as the 10th Administrator of the EPA the following day. On December 13, 2004, Leavitt was nominated by Bush to succeed Tommy Thompson as Secretary of Health and Human Services and was confirmed by the Senate by voice vote on January 26, 2005.
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James Duane Doty (November 5, 1799 – June 13, 1865) was a land speculater and politician in the United States who played a large role in the development of Wisconsin and Utah Territory. He was the 5th governor of Utah Territory.
In 1861 President Abraham Lincoln appointed Doty to the position of Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Utah Territory. Doty was successful in this position, and following the 1863 resignation of Stephen Harding, the Governor of Utah Territory, Lincoln gave Doty the governorship. As governor, Doty sought to repair relations between the federal government and the territory's Mormons, who had greatly disliked many of the previous territorial governors. Doty also promoted the construction of schools and negotiations with local Native American tribes. Doty died in office on June 13, 1865, shortly after the outbreak of Utah's Black Hawk War. He was buried at the Fort Douglas Cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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John Moses Browning (January 21, 1855 – November 26, 1926), born in Ogden, Utah, was an American firearms designer who developed myriad varieties of weapons, cartridges, and gun mechanics, many of which are used in the U.S. military and elsewhere to this day. He is arguably one of the most important figures in the development of modern automatic and semi-automatic firearms and is credited with 128 gun patents — his first (for a single shot rifle) was granted October 7, 1879.
One significant contribution is the pistol slide design, found on nearly every modern automatic handgun, developed in the 1890s and introduced on Colt and Fabrique Nationale (FN) pistols such as the M1911. He also developed the first gas-operated automatic machine gun, the Colt-Browning Model 1895 — a system that would surpass recoil - actuated in popularity. Other successful designs include the Browning .50 caliber machine gun, the Browning Automatic Rifle, and a ground-breaking semi-automatic shotgun, the Browning Auto-5.
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Portal:Utah/Selected biography/20 Donny Osmond (born December 9, 1957 in Ogden, Utah) is an American entertainer. He is a singer, musician, actor and former teen idol. He has also been a talk show and game show host, record producer, race car driver and author. He is known for being half of the brother-sister singing act Donny & Marie.
Osmond was born to Olive May Davis and George Virl Osmond. He is the brother of Alan, Jay, Jimmy, Merrill, Wayne, Marie, Tom, and Virl Osmond. Alan, Jay, Merrill, Wayne, and Donny were members of the popular singing group The Osmonds (also known as The Osmond Brothers).
Osmond became a teen idol in the early 1970s as a solo singer, in addition to performing with his older brothers. He along with David Cassidy were easily the biggest "Cover Boy" pop stars for Tiger Beat magazine in the early 70's. His signature solo song, "Puppy Love" vaulted him into international fame. The fame was further advanced by his appearance on the "Here's Lucy" show, where he sang "Too Young" to Lucy's daughter/actress Luci Arnaz.
As a teen heartthrob, Donny's signature color was purple, and he always wore purple socks on the television show Donny & Marie. In the mid '70s, he teamed up with his younger sister, Marie. The duo recorded several albums together, before and during they starred in their own television variety series, Donny & Marie, which aired on ABC between 1976 and 1979.