TIM MAGUIRE

Reeve’s wife, Dana, was by his side until his death.

Reeve’s widow, Dana Reeve, headed the Christopher Reeve Foundation after his death. Although a non-smoker, she
was diagnosed with lung cancer on August 9, 2005. She
died at age 44 on March 6, 2006, and the foundation was subsequently renamed the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. All Reeve’s children serve on the board of
directors of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.

German businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving
1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, died of liver failure on 9
October 1974 at the age of 66. 

A member of the Nazi Party, he ran an enamel-works factory
in Krakow during the German occupation of Poland, employing
workers from the nearby Jewish ghetto.

In 1944, all Jews at Plaszow were sent to Auschwitz, but
Schindler, at great risk to himself, bribed officials into
allowing him to keep his workers and set up a factory in
a safer location in occupied Czechoslovakia. By the war’s
end, he was penniless, but he had saved many Jewish lives.

Schindler’s factory in Kraków, 2011.

Schindler’s grave in Jerusalem. The Hebrew inscription
reads: "Righteous Among the Nations"; the German
inscription reads: "The Unforgettable Lifesaver of 1200 Persecuted Jews."

Schindler’s memorial in Svitavy, Czech Republic, his
birthplace.

On October 8, 1871, flames sparked in the Chicago barn of
Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, igniting a two-day blaze that
killed between 200 and 300 people, destroys 17,450 buildings,
left 100,000 homeless and caused an estimated $200 million
(in 1871 dollars; more than $4 billion today) in damages.

Legend has it that a cow kicked over a lantern in the O’Leary
barn and started the fire, but other theories hold that humans
or even a comet may have been responsible for the event that
left four square miles of the Windy City, including its business
district, in ruins.