Author J.G. Ballard was born in Shanghai to British parents. During World War II, Ballard and his family were interned by the Japanese, an event that proved a pivotal influence on Ballard’s fiction. At the war’s end, the family returned to Britain; Ballard studied medicine, worked as a copywriter, and, later, joined the Royal Air Force. He began writing stories for pulp science fiction magazines in the 1950s and then branched into surrealistic novels. Similar images reoccur in Ballard’s stories: disconnected people, un-tethered time, desolate landscapes,ruined machinery. In Crash (1973), Ballard’s protagonist becomes obsessed with car crashes; The Atrocity Exhibition (1970) explores mass media’s control over people’s lives. Ballard’s best known work, Empire of the Sun, is a semi-autobiographical story of a young boy interned by the Japanese during World War II. Told from the boy’s point of view, the story’s events seem inexplicable, hallucinatory, horrifically matter-of-fact.

Although Handy did not create the blues, he was one of the first musicians to bring it to a commercial audience. His 1909 song "Mr Crump" is widely considered to be the first big blues hit and helped to popularize the blues beyond its traditional poor black roots. Most of Handy’s professional life was spent as a traveling musician and band leader, but he also briefly taught music at the Agricultural and Mechanical College in Normal, Alabama. After, Handy wrote three definitive books on the blues, the first author to treat the subject as a serious genre worthy of scholarly attention. During the 1920s he formed his own music publication company, a business that proved quite lucrative and brought him great financial success. Through-out his life Handy was plagued by vision problems and a 1943 fall left him completely blind. Over 800 well-wishers attended his 84th birthday party, held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. At his death, later that same year, over 150,000 people lined the route of his funeral procession.

As artistic director of the acting school the Actors Studio, Lee Strasberg’s influence on theatre and film was enormous. Born in Hungry, Strasberg came to the U.S. as a child. He made his theatrical debut in 1924; in 1931 he co-founded the Group Theatre, which became a proving ground for such influential directors and actors as Elia Kazan, Stella Adler, and John Garfield. In 1950, Strasberg was named artistic director of The Actor’s Studio. There, he nurtured such talent as Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Kim Stanley and James Dean. A proponent of "method acting", Strasberg encouraged his students to get under the skins of their characters, and to perform naturalistically, without flourishes or exaggerations. Strasberg only appeared in eight films, but in 1974 he was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in The Godfather: Part II. He lost to one of his most famous protégés, Robert De Niro. Strasberg died in 1982.

Already famous for his association with the British socialist movement, George Bernard Shaw turned to the theatre. His plays, which began to be performed in the 1890s, were social comedies with political and philosophical over-tunes and garnered Shaw ready audiences and acclaim both in England and Europe. His rejection of the melodrama of the Victorian period helped to modernize theatre. Throughout the early part of the 20th century, Shaw’s theatrical examinations of moral choice and religious duty, as filtered through tragic-comic situations, made him a celebrated theatrical personality. In 1925, after three decades of playwriting, Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, a choice inspired by his most recent work, Saint Joan Shaw refused the award and donated the cash prize that came with it towards an English edition of the works of playwright August Strindberg, who, although himself Swedish, had never been recognized by the Nobel Prize Committee.

In 1915 Polish immigrant turned American entrepreneur Samual Goldfish joined with Broadway producers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn to merge their talents and last names to create Goldwyn Picture Corporation. In the process, Goldfish changed his name legally to Goldwyn, and the new company took as its trademark a soon-to-be famous lion named Leo. In 1923, the company merged with Louis B. Mayer’s Metro Studio to become Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. During Hollywood’s classic years, MGM Studios was the largest studio in Hollywood, famous for its musicals, and its motto "more stars than there are in the heavens." Goldwyn was forced out of the company during its 1923 merger; he subsequently formed Samuel Goldwyn Pictures, and as Hollywood’s most successful independent producer, discovered director Billy Wilder and actor Gary Cooper.

Born into a noble Florentine family, whose roots stretched back far into Italian history, Pucci served for fourteen years as a fighter pilot in the Italian Air Force. Bad health due to war injuries grounded him, and soon after, while on a skiing vacation, he was approached by a fashion photographer intrigued by his ski clothes. Upon learning that the clothes were of his own design,the photographer photographed them for Harper’s Bazaar. The designs were an instant hit, launching Pucc’s fashion career. Pucci’s designs gained momentum during the sixties when his vivid swirly prints seemed in perfect harmony with the psychedelic mood of that decade. In the late 1960s, Pucci undertook his most famous commission: designing stewardess uniforms for Braniff Airlines. Pucci created a mix-and-match wardrobe that featured colors such as mint and strawberry, mini-skirts, and the "space bubble" a clear plastic bubble-like rain hat.

The longest running daily radio broadcast program in history was first broadcast from Helena, Arkansas in 1941. Sponsored by King Biscuit Flour, the live program played the blues during an era when most radio stations would not play African-American music. . The show quickly became an important showcase for black music, and its popularity spawned similar programs on other stations, helping to transform blues from a regional music genre into a true American idiom. The original King Biscuit band consisted of Sonny Boy Williamson, Robert Lockwood, Jr., Pinetop Perkins, and James Peck Curtis. As a consequence of the show, Helena, Arkansas became an important blues center and attracted both musicians and fans. The show has aired over 14,000 times, more than any other radio show, and eventually spawned the King Biscuit Flour Hour, a rock and roll radio show, and the King Biscuit Blues festival, and an award winning blues magazine.