New Yorker Thomas Dartmouth, known as T.D. Rice, or "Daddy" Rice, was a world-famous stage performer who had invented and popularized the black-face minstrel character of "Jim Crow" beginning in the late 1830s.  The dancing African-American character was purportedly based on an actual crippled slave who worked in a livery stable in Louisville, Kentucky near a theater where Rice was performing. Careless with his wealth, Rice died in near poverty in New York City aged fifty-two. (By John Osborne)    

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was born in Danzig (present-day Gdańsk) on February 22, 1788 and grew up in Hamburg. He was educated at the University of Göttingen and was a lecturer at Berlin University but settled in Frankfurt-in-Main where he lived for the rest of his life alone with his poodles.  His most famous work, The World as Will and Representation, influenced many later thinkers, including Nietsche and Wittgenstein. (By John Osborne)