Who's from your state or province?

Al Franken is doing a bit 50 States in 50 days in which he gives information about a different state each day. He always includes famous people from the state. If you were doing that from where you live what famous residents of your state or province would you list? If you aren't from the US or Canada pick what you think would be an appropriate division of your country. American's can find a list of people from there state at 50states.com. I can't find a similar page for Canada. The best I could find was this List of Famous People from Ontario.

That page informed me that the elder George Bush was born in Milton, MA. I wish I didn't know that.

Don't shoot the messenger.

If it makes you feel any better axe murderer Lizzy Borden was born on my birthday.

John Ashcroft's last name means pretty much the same as my last name, Nash.

Famous New Yorkers include:

• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar basketball player
  
• Woody Allen film director
  
• Isaac Asimov science fiction writer
  
• Humphrey Bogart actor
  
• Mel Brooks film director
  
• John Jay first chief Justice of the Supreme Court
  
• Aaron Copland composer
  
• Agnes de Mille choreographer
  
• Richard Feynman Nobel Prize-winning physicist
  
• Henry Louis Gehrig
  
• Sarah Gellar vampire slayer
  
• George Gershwin compose
  
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Supreme Court Justice
  
• Washington Irving author
  
• Chico, Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo Marx comedians
  
• Herman Melville author
  
• Mary Tyler Moore - actress and producer
  
• Ogden Nash poet
  
• Eugene O'Neill playwright
  
• Joey Ramone rock musician
  
• Franklin D. Roosevelt U.S. president
  
• Jonas Salk polio researcher
  
• Margaret Sanger birth control
  
• J. D. Salinger - author
  
• Martin Scorsese - film director
  
• Patti Smith - singer, songwriter, poet
  
• Steven Weinberg - Nobel Prize-winning physicist
  
• Walt Whitman poet

That's way too many and I left off many good ones.

I knew that Bill Gates, Kurt Cobain and Jimmy Hendricks were from here, but dude.. Adam West and Bob Barker.. Crazy.

Bob Barker TV host
Carol Channing actress
Kurt Cobain grunge rock icon
Judy Collins singer
Bing Crosby singer, actor
Frances Farmer actress
Bill Gates software executive
Jimi Hendrix guitarist
Kenny Loggins singer, songwriter
Adam West actor
Martha Wright singer
Audrey Wurdemann poet
Hank Ketcham cartoonist
John Knowles author
Mary McCarthy author, Seattle
Gypsy Rose Lee entertainer, Seattle

Here are�some ones for PA... at least the ones I found interesting.

�August Wilson (playwright)
HSH Princess Grace of Monaco (she did a little acting, too)
Kevin Bacon (actor & object of a silly game)
Danny Bonaduce (media whore)
Stephen Foster (composer)
H. J. Heinz (the ketchup king)
Michael Keaton (actor)
Henry Mancini (composer)
Joe Montana, Joe Namath, Johnny Unitas & Jim Kelly (football QBs & all from the Pittsburgh area)
Fred Rogers (yup, Mister Rogers)
Andy Warhol (artist... famous for only 15 minutes)
Cyril Wecht (forensic pathologist & media whore)

I'll leave it up to Caroline to add to the list... :-)

People:
- Daniel Boone
- Sundance Kid
- Betsy Ross

Animals:
- Smarty Jones
- Punxsutawny Phil

Computers:
- Deep Blue !

Liza Weil, the girl who plays Paris on the Gilmore Girls, and who is friends with my uncle!

mmm...lisa weil.

Hmm, there's a serious lack of cute boys on that list. I might need to consider relocating.

How about Ben Franklin? I'd say he tops the list. He wasn't born in PA but that is where he chose to spend his life.

The Ohio list is fairly long. I suppose it's because all the cool people are born in Ohio (or at least live there for a bit ;-)

The Maine list is shorter, but there seem to be a whole lot of writers on it...

When I think famous people from Maine I think of the Maine Mafia of folk musicians:

• Slaid Cleaves
  
• Rod Picott
  
• Patty Griffin
  
• Ellis Paul

There is at least one more but I never remember who that is.

He isn't who I was thinking of but Ray LaMontagne is also from Maine.

Ray LaMontagne is also from Maine.

Ooh! I love Ray LaMontagne! Funny story, actually...my band teacher played a couple tracks off of <i>Trouble</i>, and so I looked him up online later and grabbed some live mp3s from his site. Then I found out my brother saw him live (briefly, but remembered the name) when he was at some amusement park with my cousin. Lucky.

That cd is on my list now.

ROD PICOTT.

I said Rod, he's a charter member of the Maine Mafia, the notorious South Berwick gang.

They mysteriously left out Katie Holmes :P

Blame the anti-scientologist conspiracy.

This list reads like an R.E.M. song. And they spelled Spock's name wrong!

John Adams 2nd U.S. president, Braintree
John Quincy Adams 6th U.S. president, Braintree
Samuel Adams patriot, Boston
Jack Albertson actor, Malden
Horatio Alger author, Revere
Susan B. Anthony woman suffragist, Adams
F. Lee Bailey defense attorney, Waltham
Clara Barton American Red Cross founder, Oxford
Leonard Bernstein conductor, Lawrence
Forrest M. Bird inventor, Stoughton
Harold Stephen Black inventor, Leominster
Rachel Fuller Brown inventor, Springfield
William Cullen Bryant poet, editor, Cummington
Luther Burbank horticulturalist, Lancaster
George Bush 41st U.S. president, Milton
John Chapman / Johnny Appleseed nurseryman, Leominster
William D. Coolidge inventor, Hudson
John Singleton Copley painter, Boston
E. E. Cummings poet, Cambridge
Bette Davis actress, Lowell
Cecil B. DeMille film director, Ashfield
Emily Dickinson poet, Amherst
Ralph Waldo Emerson philosopher, poet, Boston
Brian Evans singer, Haverhill
Ann Smith Franklin printer, almanac publisher, Boston
Benjamin Franklin statesman, scientist, Boston
Buckminster Fuller architect, educator, Milton
Robert Hutchings Goddard rocketry, Worcester
John Hancock statesman, Braintree
Nathaniel Hawthorne author, Salem
Oliver Wendell Holmes poet, Cambridge
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. jurist, Boston
Winslow Homer painter, Boston
Elias Howe inventor, Spencer
Helen Hunt Jackson writer, Amherst
John F. Kennedy U.S. president, Brookline
Amy Lowell poet, Brookline
Percival Lowell astronomer, Boston
James Russell Lowell poet, Cambridge
Robert Lowell poet, Boston
Horace Mann educator, Franklin
Cotton Mather clergyman, Boston
Sharon Christa McAuliffe teacher, astronaut, Framingham
Samuel F. B. Morse painter, inventor, Charlestown
Leonard Nemoy (sic) actor, Boston
Albert Pike pioneer teacher, lawyer, Boston
Edgar Allan Poe writer, Boston
Ella Raines actress, Snoquaimie
Paul Revere silversmith, Revolutionary War figure, Boston
Robert H. Rines inventor, Boston
Dr. Seuss Theodore Geisel author, illustrator, Springfield
Lucy Stone woman suffragist, West Brookfield
Louis Henry Sullivan architect, Boston
Henry David Thoreau author, Concord
Max Tishler inventor, Boston
James McNeill Whistler painter, Lowell
Eli Whitney inventor, Westborough
John Greenleaf Whittier poet, Haverhill
Eli Whitney inventor, Westboro
Jo Dee Messina country singer, Holliston

I wouldn't have included poe. While he may have been born in MA he group up in Virginia and lived his adult life mainly in MD and NY. If I were to credit him to one state I'd say Maryland. To my great shame I've never been to his house in the Bronx, where he wrote "The Raven."

To my great shame I've never been to his house in the Bronx, where he wrote "The Raven."

You can visit his house? Oohhhh. I'm a *big* Poe fanboy and have annoyed lots of people with reading/reciting The Raven...

Now I know what to do when I'm in NYC the next time...

oh gosh I *adore* Leonard Bernstein but never knew he was from MA

My city of St Catharines�is famous (and infamous) for a few things: the zipper was invented here! And we are Canada's fattest city - apparently we have the most obese people. Also from here is Paul Bernardo, not that that is something to tout. Geddy Less of Rush is from here too, whee!� And in the past summer we broke the Guinness World Toga Party Record, with 3000+ people. We are also the donut shop capital of the world as proclaimed on Letterman many years back, but i dunno if we still hold that title.�Theres more but i cant think right now.

That made me think of when I passed through Parry Sound Ontario. There was a big banner as you entered town: "Home of Bobby Orr."

Emily Carr
Terry Fox
Chief Dan George
Bryan Adams
The Right Honourable Kim Campbell, 19th Prime Minister of Canada

hrm, i know there are more, but it's hard to find, i'll post more when i think of them.

michael j. fox is from burnaby, i think?

yah, he was born in alberta... but moved here when quite young, i'm not sure if that counts as bc or alberta though.

oh, probably alberta. i didn't know that.

I'd count it in both but more for British Columbia. I put Isaac Asimov on the New York list even though he was born in the USSR. He grew up in New York and that's what matters. Illinois rightly claims Lincoln even though he was born in Kentucky and was raised in Indiana. He moved to Illinois when he was an adult. But that is where he had is career till he was president. So I think that should count.

I moved to MA recently but live the most part of my life in Hanover, Germany. Famous people who came to my mind without looking anything up:

• George II., king of Great Britain and Ireland and Duke Of Hanover


• Hermann Bahlsen, cookie tycoon :D yum.


• Fritz Haarmann, probably Germany's most famous serial killer. He was said to have made sausage out of his victim's corpses :D Defintely my favorite. And this guy is *so* Halloween ;)

I'll add Wilhelm Herschel the discoverer of Uranus. He was court musician to the House of Hanover and moved to England when George III assumed the British throne. Wilhelm then became William.

Arnold, Benedict (Norwich)
Barnum, P. T. (Bethel)
Borgnine, Ernest (Hamden)
Brown, John (Torrington)
Burghoff, Gary (Bristol)
Burke, Brooke (Hartford)
Bush, George W. (New Haven)
Close, Glenn (Greenwich)
Colt, Samuel (Hartford)
Crane, Bob (Waterbury)
Giamatti, Paul (New Haven)
Hale, Nathan (Coventry)
Hepburn, Katharine (Hartford)
Knight, Ted (Terryville)
Libby, Lewis "Scooter" (New Haven)
Lieberman, Joe (Stamford)
Mayer, John (Bridgeport)
Nader, Ralph (Winsted)
Olmsted, Frederick Law (Hartford)
Phillips, Bijou (Greenwich)
Porcaro, Jeff (Hartford)
Proulx, Annie (Norwich)
Ryan, Meg (Fairfield)
Skakel, Michael
Spock, Dr. (New Haven)
Stowe, Harriet Beecher (Litchfield)
Van Der Beek, James (Cheshire)
von Oy, Jenna

Goerge W. Bush, Joe Lieberman and Lewis Libby. Now thats depressing...

Samuel Colt was born on my birthday and I literally bumped into Meg Ryan. Yes it is all about me.