Ernestine Allen’s early life is kind of sketchy. The sultry jazz vocalist offered different stories of her humble beginning throughout her life. She fudged on dates and locations. She claimed she sang at clubs that weren’t yet established during the times she gave for her performances. Nevertheless, there is no denying Ernestine’s talent and appeal.

She sang with and recorded for a number of swing and big bands including the charismatic Lucky Millinder. Millinder was an interesting character. As a band leader, he couldn’t read or write music,  didn’t play an instrument and rarely sang. He was, however, a compelling figure and an accomplished showman. He renamed young Ernestine as “Annisteen” as a tribute to his hometown of Anniston, Alabama. The newly-christened Annisteen had a half dozen hits with Lucky Millinder in the early 1950s.

Later, Annisteen signed a contract with Capitol Records and toured with the doo-wop group The Orioles. She scored a big hit with “Fujiyama Mama” a tune later made famous by rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson.

In the 1960s, Annisteen retired from singing to take a job in a hospital administrative office. It was a job she held for the next twenty years. In August 1992, at the age of 71, Annisteen suffered a fatal heart attack.

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After her parents separated, Merna Kennedy’s mother packed up the family and moved to California. Mama Kennedy began to teach, prep and train seven-year old Merna and her brother Merle to perform as a song-and-dance duo. The siblings were a popular vaudeville act and were featured often at Los Angeles prominent vaudeville theaters. They caught the eye of Lita Grey, Charlie Chaplin‘s second wife. Sadly, Merle broke his leg, putting an end to the act.

Through her connection to Lita Grey, Merna landed a role in Chaplin’s film The Circus. Because of the leg strength she gained from dancing, Merna was given the role of a bareback rider.

Merna made more films, including two dozen talkies, but called it a career in 1934 when she married choreographer/director Busby Berkeley. The union only lasted two years.

In December 1944, Merna married Master Sergeant Forrest Brayton. Just four days after the marriage, Merna died from a heart attack. She was 36.

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For 20 years — for 20 Christmases — jovial John Toomey played Santa Claus for Macy’s at its famed Union Square location in San Francisco. And boy!, did John fit the part. Sporting a chest-length white beard and cherry-red cheeks, John was the spitting image of the traditional Santa Claus that danced in the minds of boys and girls for decades. Every year, John could be spotted on his golden throne at Union Square, smiling broadly as children climbed upon his lap to reveal their wishes for Christmas morning. He delivered a hearty “ho-ho-ho” to the delight of his small visitors and their parents alike. During the year, he was recognized running personal errands and, despite wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt. Locals referred to his as “Santa John” and he was just fine with that. And every year, he’d return to his familiar place at Union Square.

Until 2010.

A few weeks before Christmas, an older couple was visiting Santa John. He asked them if they had been naughty or nice, setting them up for a punchline he had used hundreds of times over the years. When they replied “Nice, of course!,” he laughed and said, “That’s too bad, because I know where all the naughty boys and girls live!”  The couple did not find Santa John’s joke funny. They complained to Macy’s management and John Toomey was promptly fired. Folks who later brought their children for their annual visit to Macy’s Union Square Santa were greeted by a different Santa… and they were very disappointed. Picket lines popped up. Loyal patrons voiced their anger to Macy’s, but the department store stood firm on their decision.

Local San Francisco bar Lefty O’Doul’s came to the rescue. The popular neighborhood watering hole offered John Toomey a gig as Santa Claus. Owner Nick Bovis offered John double his previous salary as well as a larger throne… plus the promise that he could tell any sort of jokes he liked. John happily accepted. Lefty O’Doul’s charged $10 for photos with Santa, with all proceeds going toward the San Francisco Fire Department’s Toy Drive for less-fortunate children. Crowds flocked to Lefty O’Doul’s. Lots of money was raised for a good cause. And John Toomey was offered a lifetime contract with his new employer.

In July 2011, John Toomey was discovered dead in his room at San Francisco’s Market Street residential hotel. He was 69-years old.

In 2025, Macy’s quietly eliminated the appearance of Santa at the Union Square location, putting an end to an 80-year tradition.

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Heavily influenced by her parents’ love of traditional Romanian folk music, teenage Mădălina Manole began taking guitar lessons and joined a local youth choir. After college, Mădălina worked as an air traffic controller while performing at festivals in her free time. She met and married fellow singer Şerban Georgescu, who took an interest in furthering his wife’s career. Through connections with Romanian radio, Mădălina got airplay with a song composed by her husband that became very popular. She signed a recording contract and a favorable article in Billboard magazine boosted her popularity. She played hundreds of shows in her native Romania, including a bill with Los del Rio, the band famous for the international dance hit “Macarena.”

On July 14, 2010 — her 43rd birthday — Mădălina took her own life by drinking a half-liter of carbofuran, a highly toxic pesticide.

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June Wilkinson was a born performer. She danced on stage at twelve and, at 15, became the youngest topless dancer at London’s venerable Windmill Theater. While on a promotional tour of the United States, the young star-to-be caught the eye of publisher Hugh Hefner. He immediately arranged for a photoshoot for the 18-year old and June made her first of seven Playboy pictorials in 1958. Hef christened her “The Bosom” and exaggerated June’s already impressive measurements in promotional material as “45-22-35.”  (June later admitted that the actual figures weren’t that far off.)

In 1960, June was cast in the low-budget voodoo adventure Macumba Love. She followed up with roles in the stage productions of Norman, Is That You?, The Marriage-Go-Round and Come Blow Your Horn. Director John Cassavetes cast her in a small role in the 1962 biopic Too Late Blues with Bobby Darin.

Although she made her final appearance in Playboy in 1962, June’s photos appeared in men’s magazines, newspapers and advertisements for over twenty years, making her one of the most photographed women of the era.

In 1972, June met NFL quarterback Dan Pastoirini and the two were married the following year. They had a daughter before divorcing in 1982. June never remarried. In 1997, at the age of 57, June posed nude for Playboy one final time for a special “Then and Now” feature.

After many years out of the spotlight, June passed away in July 2015 at the age of 85.

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John Scott Harrison was one of ten children born to Indiana Territory Governor (and future United States President) William Henry Harrison. John was elected to and served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1852 to 1857. After he was defeated for a third term, he retired to his farm in Ohio. John and his second wife Elizabeth, were the parents of ten children, including future United States President Benjamin Harrison. (John had three children with his first wife Lucretia.) John Scott Harrison is the only person to have been both a father and son of a U.S. President.

John Scott Harrison died in 1878 at the age of 73. He was buried in a family plot in North Bend, Ohio – from where his body was stolen. Grave robbing was a common practice at the time, as fresh corpses were purchased by medical schools from shady characters with no questioned asked. On the day of John Scott Harrison’s funeral, it was discovered that the body of Augustus Devlin, who was interred in an adjacent grave, was stolen. The next day, John’s son Benjamin and a colleague went — with search warrants — to Ohio Medical College in hopes of finding Devlin’s body. Their investigation brought them to a delivery chute where they discovered the naked body of John Scott Harrison hanging from a rope. Devlin’s body was later discovered preserved in a vat of brine at the University of Michigan’s medical college. The Harrison family brought charges against the Ohio Medical College. This eventually contributed to the passage of the Ohio Anatomy Law of 1881, a landmark statute, whereby medical schools were provided with unclaimed bodies in a more regulated and documented fashion, discouraging grave robbers.

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