41.   Born into a Baptist family in Harlem, Moore was a convert to Catholicism.

42.   Born into a biker family in a Sacramento Valley town, Hammon rolled joints to sell at school while his parents cooked speed in a backwoods cabin.

43.   Born into a family of laborers and domestic servants in Pennsylvania, he worked as a laborer himself before entering the Army in World War I.

44.   Born into a family of Marxist labor organizers, Montesinos was named after Vladimir Lenin.

45.   Born into a French family in Brazil, he learned photography from a German engineer and fashioned images geared to a Victorian taste for the idyllic and the exotic.

46.   Born into a prominent family of industrialists in British India, Amjad Ali was a commanding presence in the United Nations for many years.

47.   Born into a traditionally clergical family, Butler completed the expected training but refused ordination.

48.   Born into an era of wood stoves and white gloves, Whaley learned to love her microwave and tennis shoes.

49.   Born into an Orthodox Jewish family in an Orthodox Jewish community, he studied at a yeshiva through his high school years and observed all religious rules and traditions.

50.   Born into the aristocracy of czarist Russia, Nabokov claimed to have been bilingual from birth and judged his English to be better than his Russian.