- Jack Black
Jack Black was a late 19th century/early 20th century hobo and professional burglar, living out the dying age of the Wild West. He wrote "You Can't Win", a memoir or sketched autobiography describing his days on the road and life as an honorable outlaw. Black's book was written as an anti-crime book urging criminals to go straight but is also his statement of belief in the futility of prisons and the criminal justice system, hence the title of the book. - Sophie Dahl
Sophie Dahl (born September 15, 1977 in London) is an English fashion model and author. Her mother is writer Tessa Dahl (daughter of the children's author Roald Dahl and the actress Patricia Neal) and her father is actor Julian Holloway (son of actor Stanley Holloway). Dahl was discovered by Isabella Blow on a London street at the age of 18. At a voluptuous dress size and 38DD bra-size, … - Lin Zexu
Lin Zexu (August 30, 1785 - November 22, 1850), also known as Lin Tse-hsu, was a Chinese scholar and official during the Qing dynasty. He is most recognized for his fight against opium smuggling into Guangzhou, which is considered to be the primary catalyst for the First Opium War of 1839–42. - Alfred W. McCoy
Alfred McCoy is author of "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (Metropolitan Books, The American Empire Project, 2006) and a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. - John Jacob Astor
John Jacob (originally either Johann Jakob or Johann Jacob) Astor (July 17, 1763 - March 29, 1848) was the first of the Astor family dynasty and the first millionaire in the United States, the creator of the first Trust in America, from which he made his fortune in the fur trade, real estate, and opium industries. - Francis Thompson
Francis Thompson was an English poet and ascetic. After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but in menial work, became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. A married couple read his poetry and rescued him, publishing his first book, "Poems" in 1893. Francis Thompson lived as an unbalanced invalid in Wales and at Storrington, but wrote over 3 books of poetry, with other works and essays, before dying of tuberculosis in 1907. - Charles Elliot
Charles Elliot, also Charles Elliott was a British naval officer, diplomat, colonial administrator and drug-trafficker - a combination considered legitimate at the time. Born in England, he joined the British Royal Navy in 1816. He participated in the bombardment of Algiers, served in India, Africa and the West Indies and became an Admiral. He was appointed Chief Superintendent of Trade and British Minister to China in 1835 and was based in Macao, … - Samuel Russell
Samuel Wadsworth Russell, born in Middletown, Connecticut (August 25,1789 - 1862) was an American entrepreneur and trader, and founder of Russell & Company, the largest and most important American trading house in China from 1842 to its closing in 1891. - William Jardine
Dr. William Jardine (1784-1843) was a ship surgeon who went into the opium trading business in China, where he became a powerful merchant and was instrumental in starting the First Opium War. - Ben Greenman
Ben Greenman (born 1969) is an American writer and magazine editor. Greenman was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Miami, Florida. He attended Miami Palmetto High School and then Yale University where he worked on the Yale Herald. After Yale, he worked as a film critic at New Times newspaper in Miami and then moved to New York City to work as a freelance writer and editor. His journalism has appeared in such magazines as "Rolling Stone", "Mother Jones", … - Jeanne Duval
Jeanne Duval was a mulatto actress, dancer, and muse to French poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire, for twenty years. They met in 1842, when Duval left Haiti for France, and the two remained together, albeit stormily, for the next two decades. Duval is said to have been the woman whom Baudelaire loved most, in his life, after his mother. Poems of Baudelaire's which are dedicated to Duval or pay her homage are: "Le balcon", "Parfum exotique", … - Du Yuesheng
Du Yuesheng, commonly known as "Big-Eared Du", (1887-1951) was a gangster who spent most of his life in Shanghai, China. He involved his gang in the conflict between the Communists and Nationalists, eventually going into exile in Hong Kong prior to his death in 1951. He joined the Green Gang, the most powerful secret society in Shanghai, and eventually made his way to the top as the ringleader of the gang. - Jiaqing Emperor
The Jiaqing Emperor was the sixth emperor of the Manchu Qing dynasty, and the fifth Qing emperor to rule over China, from 1796 to 1820. Son of the famous Qianlong Emperor, he is remembered for his prosecution of Heshen (和珅), the infamously corrupt favorite of Qianlong Emperor (Gaozong), as well as for attempts to restore the state and curb the smuggling of opium inside China. - Friedrich Sertürner
Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner (born 19 June 1783 in Neuhaus (near Paderborn), died 20 February 1841 in Hamelin) was a German pharmacist, who discovered morphine in 1804. As a pharmacist's apprentice in Paderborn, he was the first to isolate morphine from opium. He called the isolated alkaloid "morphium" after the Greek god of dreams, Morpheus. It was not only the first alkaloid to be extracted from opium, but the first ever alkaloid to be isolated from any plant. - Roy Moxham
Roy Moxham is a British writer, author of historical books highlighting little known historical facts. He recently retired from London University and lives in London. His most well-known book is "The Great Hedge of India". This book is part-travelogue, part-historical treatise on the author's quest to find a 1500-mile long customs hedge built by the British in India to prevent smuggling of salt and opium. - Christopher Wood
John Christopher Wood (7 April, 1901 - 21 August, 1930), often called Kit Wood, was an English painter born in Knowsley, near Liverpool. Wood studied architecture at Liverpool University, where he met Augustus John, who encouraged him to be a painter. He trained to be a painter in Paris, where he met Picasso and Diaghilev, and he travelled around Europe and north Africa between 1922 and 1924. - Xi Shengmo
Xi Sheng Mo 席勝魔 also known as "Pastor Hsi", was a Chinese Christian leader. He was born "Xi Liaozhi" in a village near Linfen, became a Confucian scholar, and after his conversion to Christianity changed his given name to Shengmo or "Conqueror of Demons". Having been an opium addict himself, he ran a ministry to opium addicts in many locations over a considerable area. David Hill was instrumental in introducing Xi to Christianity. - Phoumi Nosavan
Phoumi Nosavan (1920-1985) was a Lao military and political figure of the Second Indochina War. Backed by the CIA and the Programs Evaluation Office, Phoumi, then a colonel, became a cabinet minister in the right-wing government of the Kingdom of Laos in February 1959 and a general several months later. Shortly after Kong Le's neutralist coup, he sought help from Sarit Dhanarajata to establish a competing capital in Savannakhet. - Jacques Vaché
Jacques Vaché was a friend of André Breton, the founder of surrealism. Vaché was one of the chief inspirations behind the Surrealist movement. As Breton said: :"En littérature, je me suis successivement épris de Rimbaud, de Jarry, d'Apollinaire, de Nouveau, de Lautréamont, mais c'est à Jacques Vaché que je dois le plus" :("In literature, I am successively taken with Rimbaud, with Jarry, with Apollinaire, with Nouveau, with Lautréamont, … - Little Pete
Little Pete (1864-January 23, 1897) was a prominent leader of the Som Yop Tong during the Tong wars of San Francisco's Chinatown in the 1890s. Born "Fung Jing Toy" in China around 1864, Little Pete immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of five in 1870. As a child he was said to have witnessed a battle between the Suey Sings and the Kwong Docks Tongs in 1875 and studied how the outcome of the battle could have been saved. - Friedrich Glauser
Friedrich Charles Glauser (b. February 4, 1896 in Vienna; d. December 8, 1938 in Genoa) was a German-language Swiss writer. He was a morphine and opium addict for most of his life, and begun writing his novel "Thumbprint" while he was an inmate at Waldau, a Swiss insane asylum. Germany's best-known crime writing award is the Glauser prize. - Haji Bashar
Haji Bashar was an early supporter of the austere Taliban movement. He fought Soviet forces that occupied Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, and is widely credited with making a fortune in trading cloth, tea and opium across the border with Iran. Bashar was arrested by the U.S. government in 2005 and charged in a heroin conspiracy. Bashar will be represented at his 2007 trial by New York criminal defense lawyer Ivan Fisher. - James Grant Forbes
James Grant Forbes was an American businessman, a member of the Forbes family. James Grant Forbes was born in Shanghai, China, where the Forbes family of Boston amassed a fortune from the opium trade and merchant banking after the Opium Wars. He went to school in England and graduated from Harvard University. Forbes was a successful international lawyer and banker. - Yen Hsi-Shan
Yen Hsi-shan, (8 October, 1883 – 22 July, 1960) was a Chinese warlord who served in the government of the Republic of China. Yen received his formal military training first in China and later at Imperial Japanese Army Academy. In Japan he became a member of Sun Yat-sen's Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui) and following the 1911 Xinhai Revolution he seized power in the province of Shanxi. Though a member of the Beiyang Army and affiliated with Duan Qirui, … - Thomas Handasyd Perkins
Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins, or T. H. Perkins, (December 15, 1764 - January 11, 1854) was an enormously wealthy Boston merchant and an archetypical Boston Brahmin. Starting with bequests from his grandfather and father-in-law, he amassed a huge fortune. As a young man he was a slave trader in Haiti, a merchant trading furs from the American Northwest to China, and then a major smuggler of Turkish opium into China. - Pierre Jean Robiquet
Pierre Jean Robiquet was a French chemist. Robiquet was at first a naval officer and became a professor at the École de pharmacie in Paris. Notable scientific achievements were among other things his determination of the chemical structures of asparagine (the first amino acid to be identified, from asparagus, in 1806, with Nicolas Louis Vaquelin), cantharidin (1810), the opium alkaloid narcotine (1817), caffeine (1821), alizarin and purpurin (1826), … - Russell Sturgis
Russell Sturgis (August 27, 1750 - September 7, 1826) was a noted Boston merchant in the China trade. Sturgis was the second son of Thomas Sturgis, Jr. (1722-1785), and Sarah Paine, of Barnstable, Massachusetts. He married Elizabeth Perkins (1756-1843), daughter of James Perkins (d. 1773), on November 11, 1773. Her grandfather was the Boston merchant and fur trader Thomas Handasyd Peck, with whom Sturgis apprenticed at age sixteen, then worked as a hatter and furrier. - Russell Sturgis
Russell Sturgis (1805-1887) was a Boston merchant active in the China trade, and later head of Baring Brothers, London. Sturgis was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1805, a grandson of the noted merchant Russell Sturgis (1750-1826), went to Harvard College at twelve, and in 1828 first sailed abroad. For a time he practiced law in Boston, but in 1833 sailed for Canton on behalf of the opium smuggler John Perkins Cushing. - Robert Bennet Forbes
Captain Robert Bennet Forbes (September 18, 1804 - November 23, 1889), was a sea-captain, China merchant, ship-owner, and writer. He was born in Jamaica Plain near Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Ralph Bennet and Margaret (Perkins) Forbes, and brother of John Murray Forbes. As a member of the Forbes family of Boston, much of his wealth was derived from the opium and China trade of the 19th century. Indeed, he played a prominent role in the outbreak of the Opium War. - Alessandro Gassman
Alessandro Gassman (born February 24, 1965) is an Italian actor. Born in Rome, he is the son of the famous actor Vittorio Gassman and Juliette Maynel. He debuted at 17 in "Di padre in figlio", written and directed by his father, and later studied in the Teathre Workshop of Florence. Among his theatrical activity, he was noted for his playing in Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Affabulazione" (1984). - Joë Bousquet
Joë Bousquet was a French poet. Wounded on May 27, 1918 at Vailly near the Aisne battlelines at the end of the First World War, he was paralysed for the rest of his life, and lived a life largely bedridden, surrounded by his books. His physical incapacity and constant pain (for which he took opium) caused a retreat from the world, but also became the starting point for an extensive body of poetry and writing. - Eli Boggs
Eli Boggs (d. 1857?) was an American pirate, one of the last active ocean-going pirates operating off the coast of China during the 1850s. Based near Hong Kong, Boggs constantly raided outgoing clipper ships carrying highly valuable cargo of opium throughout the decade. He is most particularly known for his cruelty, … - John Perkins Cushing
John Perkins Cushing (b. April 22 1787 - d.1862), called "Ku-Shing" by the Chinese, was a very wealthy Boston sea merchant, opium smuggler, and philanthropist. His sixty-foot pilot schooner, the Sylph, won the first recorded American yacht race in 1832, and the town of Belmont, Massachusetts is named after his estate. Perkins was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Robert and Ann Perkins (Maynard) Cushing. His sister Nancy later married Henry Higginson. - Albert Calmette
Léon Charles Albert Calmette was a French physician, bacteriologist and immunologist, and an important officer of the Pasteur Institute. He discovered the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, an attenuated form of Mycobacterium used in the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis. He also developed the first antivenin for snake venom, the Calmette's serum. Calmette was born in Nice, France. He wanted to serve in the Navy and be a physician, … - Lancelot Dent
Lancelot Dent was a 19th century British merchant in the Far East. He was christened on August 4, 1799 in Crosby Ravensworth, Westmoreland, England, son of William and Jane (Wilkinson) Dent. He had a powerful hold over some agency houses buying opium from the Calcutta auction, including Carr, Tagore & Company, managed by Bengali merchant Dwarkanath Tagore. However, what may not be as widely known is his power in the court of Queen Victoria. - Francis Blackwell Forbes
Francis Blackwell Forbes (1839 - 1908) was a China merchant, opium trader and botanist. He and other members of the Forbes family were active in the Opium trade and China trade during the Opium Wars, amassing a large fortune. Due to his family's deep involvement with the opium trade and opium, Forbes developed a lifelong interest in the poppy and other plants, and in Chinese botany in general. He was the son of James Grant Forbes I and brother of John Murray Forbes. - Chang Apana
Chang Apana (December 26, 1871-1933) was a Chinese-Hawaiian police officer in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the officially-acknowledged inspiration for the fictional Asian detective character, Charlie Chan, first introduced in 1925 in the mystery novel, "House without a Key". Ah Ping Chang was born in Waipio, Oahu, Hawaii. Ah Ping Chang's family moved back to China when he was only three, but Chang returned at the age of ten to live with his uncle in Waipio. - Mário de Sá-Carneiro
Mário de Sá-Carneiro was a Portuguese poet and novelist. Born in Lisbon into a military family, he lost his mother at the age of two and his grandmother at the age of nine and was cared for in his childhood by an apprehensive nanny. His father was often detached from his son's life frequently traveling the world. During his teenage years, a close friend (who had also lost his mother at an early age) committed suicide in front of his classmates and teacher. - Elizabeth Porter
Elizabeth Jervis Porter (1689-1752) was the wife of Samuel Johnson. Born Elizabeth Jarvis (or Jervis - Boswell lists both), her first marriage was to Henry Porter, a Birmingham merchant, by whom she had three children. The couple became friends of Johnson in 1732 (on first meeting him, she said to her daughter Lucy, "That is the most sensible man I ever met") and Johnson courted her after Porter's death. His affectionate name for her, "Tetty" or "Tetsey", … - Kubaba
Kubaba (in the Weidner "Chronicle"), or Kug-Baba, or elsewhere as Kubau, is the name of the only queen in the Sumerian king list. "The house of Kubaba" is mentioned "in the reign of Puzur-Nirah, king of Akšak" (line 38) in the Weidner "Chronicle", a propagandistic letter attempting to predate the shrine of Marduk to an early period: "Kubaba gave bread to the fisherman and gave water, she made him offer the fish to Esagila" (line 43).
|
| |