Articles needing additional references from April 2009

Dranem (23 May 1869 – 13 October 1935) was a French comic singer, music hall, stage and film actor.

Buddy Wayne Knox (July 20, 1933 – February 14, 1999) was an American singer-songwriter, best known for his 1957 rock & roll hit song, "Party Doll".

Jules-Henri Desfourneaux (17 December 1877, in Bar-le-Duc – 1 October 1951) was the last French executioner to officiate in public. He came from a long line of executioners named Desfourneaux stretching back many hundreds of years. Like all French executioners since 1792 he carried out the death penalty by beheading with a guillotine.
Desfourneaux was recruited by his predecessor Anatole Deibler and attended his first execution as second assistant in 1909. Following the death of Deibler in 1939—the latter having died of a heart attack in a Metro station while en route to his 300th execution—he was elected chief and was in charge of the last public execution in France on 17 June 1939, when he guillotined the five-time murderer Eugène Weidmann.
This execution was also notable as it is one of the few ever filmed, having been shot from a private apartment near the prison. For reasons unknown, Desfourneaux insisted that Greenwich rather than summertime dawn should be the official hour. This meant that contrary to custom, Weidmann was executed in broad daylight. This, combined with the public revelry around the jail (cafes were given an all-night licence extension, wine flowed and jazz blared on radios) and the filmed evidence, was largely responsible for the government's decision to hold all future executions behind closed doors.Desfourneaux was involved in further controversy during World War II when required by the Vichy Government to execute communists and members of the French Resistance, notably Marcel Langer (1903–1943), which led to the resignation of his assistants, André Obrecht, who was his cousin, and the Martin brothers, Georges and Robert. He was also responsible for the first guillotining of women since the late 19th century, including, famously, an abortionist named Marie-Louise Giraud in 1943. He put to death the axe-killer Germaine Godefroy, the last woman executed in France, on 21 April 1949.
Escaping retribution after the war, Desfourneaux increasingly turned to drink, a problem compounded by the suicide of his son. He was rejoined as first assistant in 1945 by Obrecht, who, despite his increasing dislike of Desfourneaux, could see a potential future as chief executioner looming. Further disagreements followed and Obrecht resigned for the second time in 1947.
Desfourneaux continued working until October 1951 when, whilst still in office and almost insane, he died. His eventual successor was Obrecht, who officiated until 1976, one year before the last execution in France; the death penalty was abolished in 1981.

Thomas F. Parkinson (1920–1992) Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, was a poet in his own right; an expert on the poetry of W. B. Yeats; and one of the first academic authorities to write about the Beat poets and novelists of San Francisco in the 1950s and 1960s. A deeply thoughtful man of great integrity, he was a quiet political activist for much of his life, and survived a murder attempt in 1961 by a deranged former student who sought to "get someone who was associated with Communism." Though Parkinson survived being shot in the face (and bore the scars of the assault for the rest of his life), the teaching assistant who was with him at the time was killed. Thomas Parkinson died of an apparent heart attack in 1992, at age 72, after a long illness.

Mário de Sá-Carneiro (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈmaɾju ðɨ sa kɐɾˈnɐjɾu]; May 19, 1890 – April 26, 1916) was a Portuguese poet and writer. He is one of the best known authors of the "Geração D'Orpheu", and is usually considered their greatest poet, after Fernando Pessoa.

Wilhelm Karl Keppler (14 December 1882 – 13 June 1960) was a German businessman and one of Adolf Hitler's early financial backers. Introduced to Hitler by Heinrich Himmler, Keppler helped to finance the Nazi Party and later served as one of Hitler's economic advisors.
Keppler attended Karlsruhe Technical School from 1901 to 1905. He then served in the army between 1903 and 1904 before attending Königliche Technische Hochschule zu Danzig from 1905 to 1910, where he earned his degree in engineering. He was commissioned by the army as a reserve second lieutenant in 1910. Keppler became an engineer in the chemical industry starting in 1911. He fought in the First World War.
Keppler was an engineer and chemical manufacturer at the time that he joined the NSDAP in February 1927 as member #62,424. He co-owned Odin Works, a small photographic gelatin factory, and was chairman of the I. G. Farben subsidiary Braunkohle-Benzin AG. Keppler's business career had given him close ties to the Eastman Kodak Company and other American corporations, with whom he would continue dealing as a Nazi official. U.S. military intelligence would later refer to Keppler as a "Kodak Man". Hitler appointed him as the Nazi Party's economics adviser in December 1931. He was elected to the Reichstag on 5 March 1933, representing Baden, a position which he held to 1945. In July 1933 he was appointed Reich Commissioner for Economic Affairs (German: Kommissar für Wirtschaftsfragen). This position granted Keppler charge of all party organizations involved with economic policy. After 1934, Keppler faced the problem of securing and utilizing raw materials. In October 1933, he was a founding member of Hans Frank's Academy for German Law and was named to its präsidium, or executive committee.To strengthen the Nazi Party's ties with business and industry, Keppler founded the Circle of Friends of the Economy (Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft, which is sometimes referred to as the "Keppler Circle"). Keppler joined the SS (#50,816) in August 1932 and founded the Circle of Friends of Heinrich Himmler, which was a continuation of the Keppler Circle.
Considered weak and slow, Keppler's role was supplanted in 1936 by the Four Year Plan. He served as a personal adviser to Hermann Göring on the Four Year Plan. He was given a new title of "general expert of German raw and industrial materials".He went to Austria in 1938 to prepare the ground for Anschluss. He served as Secretary at the German Embassy in Vienna in 1938, Reich Commissioner in Austria from March to June 1938, then Reich Commissioner in Slovakia in 1939, and finally Reich Commissioner in Danzig in August 1939. Keppler became Secretary of State with special duties in the Foreign Office during World War II, during which he administered SS confiscated industries in Poland and Russia. On 30 January 1942 he became an honorary Obergruppenführer (General) of the SS.

Keppler was sentenced to ten years in prison during the Ministries Trial on 14 April 1949. He was pardoned early on 1 February 1951 by the U.S. High Commission and released from prison. He died on 13 June 1960.