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Henrietta (Hettie) Anne Heathorn, the daughter of a brewer, met the scientist Thomas Huxley in Sydney, Australia, in 1847, during his term aboard the HMS Rattlesnake. Huxley returned to England in 1850, unhappily leaving his fiancée behind in Sydney. Their loving correspondence survives for the eight years of their separation.

The astronomer John Frederick William Herschel was born on March 7, 1792, in Slough, Buckinghamshire. He attended Dr. Gretton's School in Hitcham, Eton College (briefly), and St. John's College Cambridge first as a student (1809-13), and then as elected fellow, graduating with M.A. in 1816. Many honours came to him quickly.

Thomas Henry Huxley, the great Victorian scientist, "Darwin's bulldog," was born in Ealing on May 4, 1825. Despite having only two years of formal schooling, he obtained his M.B. at London University in 1845. This led to a posting as a naval surgeon with H.M.S. Rattlesnake on a surveying voyage to Australia from 1846 to 1850.

Father Tabb (John Banister Tabb) was born at "The Forrest," in Mattoax, near Richmond, Virginia, on March 22, 1845. Despite bad eyesight, he served on the Robert E. Lee steamer for the South in the Civil War and was imprisoned by the North in Point Lookout prison. After the war, he taught at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Baltimore, and Racine College, Michigan.

Thomas William Hodgson Crosland was born in Leeds on July 21, 1865. He was among the most acerbic men of letters and journalists of his lifetime. An anti-Scottish Tory and Monarchist, a Methodist, Crosland earned his living as a Fleet Street reviewer, critic, and editor for journals like The Outlook, The Academy, and the Penny Illustrated Paper.

William Herbert Carruth, born on April 5, 1859, near Osawatomie, Kansas, received his B.A. in modern languages at the University of Kansas (1880), studied at the Universities of Berlin and Munich, and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University (1889, 1893). He served as Professor of Modern Languages and then German at the University of Kansas throughout his life.

John Boyle O'Reilly, the greatest Irishman in America at the time of his death, was born at Douth Castle, Drogheda, Ireland, on June 28, 1844. After an education at the National School, and an early career in journalism, he enlisted in the Hussars and became a Fenian.

Francis Grose (ca. 1731-1791), born in Middlesex, served for more than twenty years in the army, particularly the Hampshire and then the Surrey militia, until he emerged as one of the period's greatest antiquarians.

J. S. Martinez served in the British Honduras Territorial Force in World War I. He dedicated his self-published book of poems, Carribean Jingles, published in Belize about 1926, to Lieutenant-Colonel the Honourable James Cran.

Born in about 1830 in Edinburgh of Irish parents, William McGonagall earned his living as a hand-loom weaver. He married Jean King on July 11, 1846. He heard, and obeyed, a call to write poetry in June 1877 and brought out a collection the next year, including a poem on the great Tay bridge in Dundee.