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🔗 Biography 🔗 Australia 🔗 Crime 🔗 Australia/Australian crime 🔗 South Africa 🔗 Zimbabwe

Paul Calder Le Roux (born 24 December 1972) is a former programmer, former criminal cartel boss and informant to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

In 1999, he created E4M, a free and open-source disk encryption software program for Microsoft Windows, and is sometimes credited for open-source TrueCrypt, which is based on E4M's code, though he denies involvement with TrueCrypt.

He was arrested on 26 September 2012 for conspiracy to import narcotics into the United States, and agreed to cooperate with authorities in exchange for a lesser sentence and immunity to any crimes he might admit to afterwards. He subsequently admitted to arranging or participating in seven murders, carried out as part of an extensive illegal business empire.

Le Roux was sentenced to 25 years in prison in June 2020.

🔗 United States 🔗 Biography 🔗 Women's History 🔗 Christianity 🔗 Gender Studies 🔗 United States/Rhode Island 🔗 Christianity/Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

The Public Universal Friend (born Jemima Wilkinson; November 29, 1752 – July 1, 1819) was an American preacher born in Cumberland, Rhode Island, to Quaker parents. After suffering a severe illness in 1776, the Friend claimed to have died and been reanimated as a genderless evangelist named the Public Universal Friend, and afterward shunned both birth name and gendered pronouns. In androgynous clothes, the Friend preached throughout the northeastern United States, attracting many followers who became the Society of Universal Friends.

The Public Universal Friend's theology was broadly similar to that of most Quakers. The Friend stressed free will, opposed slavery, and supported sexual abstinence. The most committed members of the Society of Universal Friends were a group of unmarried women who took leading roles in their households and community. In the 1790s, members of the Society acquired land in Western New York where they formed the township of Jerusalem near Penn Yan, New York. The Society of Universal Friends ceased to exist by the 1860s. Many writers have portrayed the Friend as a woman, and either a manipulative fraudster, or a pioneer for women's rights; others have viewed the preacher as transgender or non-binary and a figure in trans history.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Correction and Detention Facilities

Mark DeFriest (born August 18, 1960), known as the Houdini of Florida, is an American man known for his repeated escapes from prison, having successfully done so 7 times. Born in rural Florida, he was arrested for the first time in 1978, serving for a year. In 1980, DeFriest was sentenced to four years in prison for violating probation via illegal firearms possession, having initially been arrested for retrieving work tools that his recently deceased father had willed him before the will had completed probate. His sentence has since been repeatedly extended for having attempted to escape 13 times (including one count of armed robbery during one attempt), as well as collecting hundreds of disciplinary reports for minor infractions, leading to a cumulative stay of 34 years in prison.

DeFriest has cumulatively spent 27 years in solitary confinement. Following publicity, DeFriest was granted parole and released on 5 February 2019. Ten days later, he was rearrested as he checked into a mental health facility.

🔗 United States 🔗 Biography 🔗 Computer science 🔗 Telecommunications 🔗 Systems 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 Cryptography 🔗 Cryptography/Computer science 🔗 Electronics 🔗 Systems/Systems theory 🔗 Telecommunications/Bell System 🔗 Cycling

Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory". Shannon is noted for having founded information theory with a landmark paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", that he published in 1948.

He is also well known for founding digital circuit design theory in 1937, when—as a 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—he wrote his thesis demonstrating that electrical applications of Boolean algebra could construct any logical numerical relationship. Shannon contributed to the field of cryptanalysis for national defense during World War II, including his fundamental work on codebreaking and secure telecommunications.

🔗 Biography 🔗 California 🔗 Video games 🔗 Women 🔗 Biography/sports and games 🔗 California/Southern California 🔗 California/Los Angeles area 🔗 LGBTQ+ studies 🔗 Video games/esports 🔗 LGBTQ+ studies/LGBTQ+ Person

Rebecca Ann Heineman (October 30, 1963 – November 17, 2025) was an American video game designer and programmer. Heineman was a founder or co-founder of video game companies Interplay Productions, Logicware, Contraband Entertainment, and Olde Sküül. She was the chief executive officer of Olde Sküül from 2013 until her death in 2025.

🔗 United States 🔗 Biography 🔗 Virginia 🔗 Montana 🔗 United States/Wyoming

John Colter (c.1770–1775 – May 7, 1812 or November 22, 1813) was a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806). Though party to one of the more famous expeditions in history, Colter is best remembered for explorations he made during the winter of 1807–1808, when he became the first known person of European descent to enter the region which later became Yellowstone National Park and to see the Teton Mountain Range. Colter spent months alone in the wilderness and is widely considered to be the first known mountain man.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Economics 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 United Kingdom 🔗 Virginia 🔗 Chicago 🔗 Virginia/Albemarle County

Ronald Harry Coase (; 29 December 1910 – 2 September 2013) was a British economist and author. He was the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Law School, where he arrived in 1964 and remained for the rest of his life. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1991.

Coase, who believed economists should study real markets and not theoretical ones, established the case for the corporation as a means to pay the costs of operating a marketplace. Coase is best known for two articles in particular: "The Nature of the Firm" (1937), which introduces the concept of transaction costs to explain the nature and limits of firms; and "The Problem of Social Cost" (1960), which suggests that well-defined property rights could overcome the problems of externalities (see Coase theorem). Additionally, Coase's transaction costs approach is currently influential in modern organizational economics, where it was reintroduced by Oliver E. Williamson.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 University of Pennsylvania

George Harry Heilmeier (May 22, 1936 – April 21, 2014) was an American engineer, manager, and a pioneering contributor to liquid crystal displays (LCDs), for which he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Heilmeier's work is an IEEE Milestone.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Children's literature 🔗 New York (state) 🔗 Chicago 🔗 Illinois 🔗 Biography/Actors and Filmmakers 🔗 New York (state)/Columbia University 🔗 Screenwriters 🔗 Musical Theatre

William Goldman (August 12, 1931 – November 16, 2018) was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist before turning to screenwriting. He won Academy Awards for his screenplays Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and All the President's Men (1976). His other works include his thriller novel Marathon Man and comedy/fantasy novel The Princess Bride, both of which he adapted for the film versions.

Author Sean Egan has described Goldman as "one of the late twentieth century's most popular storytellers."

🔗 Biography

Shanti Devi (11 December 1926 – 27 December 1987) was an Indian woman who claimed to remember her past life, and became the subject of reincarnation research. A commission set up by the Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi supported her claim, while another report by researcher Bal Chand Nahata disputed it. Subsequently, several other researchers interviewed her, and published articles and books about her.