Gregorio Allegri was born in 1582 in Rome, Italy.

He was a Roman Catholic priest and Italian composer and singer. He studied music as a puer (boy chorister) at San Luigi dei Francesi under the maestro di cappella Giovanni Bernardino Nanino. He sang tenor at the Cathedral in Fermo from 1607 until 1628, when he joined Rome's prestigious Papal Choir. Circa 1636, he composed his famous "Miserere" for this choir. It has been sung at the Sistine Chapel during Holy Week every year since. The Vatican refused to let Allegri publish the "Miserere," and its mysterious harmonies were kept a closely guarded secret until 1770 when a 14-year-old Wolfgang Mozart wrote it down from memory after hearing it only once. Allegri also wrote several Masses and motets, and in 1618, he published a string quartet, 150 years before Haydn perfected the form.

He died on February 7, 1652, in Rome, Italy, and his tomb is in the Chiesa Nuova in Rome, the traditional burial place for Papal singers.

Charles Edwin Allen was born on November 28, 1838, in Burlington, Vermont.

In 1859, he graduated from the University of Vermont and then studied law at the Albany Law School. After practicing for a few years in New York City, he moved back to Burlington, where he worked as a city clerk from 1886 to 1903, a school Commissioner from 1883 to 1906, and an alderman from 1878 to 1882. He was an authority on the city’s history.

In 1868, he married Ellen Cordelia Lyman. He died on May 23, 1915, in Burlington, Vermont.

Reginald Clifford Allen, 1st Baron Allen of Hurtwood, was born on May 9, 1889, in Newport, Wales.

He was a British politician, peace campaigner, and author. He was educated at University College, Bristol, and Cambridge University (1908-1911). He served as Secretary and then General Manager of the Daily Citizen from 1911 to 1915. He was Chairman of the No-Conscription Fellowship during World War I and was imprisoned as a conscientious objector three times. After the war, he was Treasurer and Chairman of the Independent Labour Party (1922-1926), Chairman of the New Leader (1922-1926), and director of the Daily Herald (1925-1930). In 1934, he co-founded the Next Five Years Group seeking a progressive centre-left re-alignment in British politics. He published numerous essays, articles, and speeches on pacifism, socialism, and the Labour government.

In 1921, he married Baroness Marjory Gill (1897–1976). He suffered from tuberculosis because of his imprisonment. He died on March 3, 1939, recovering in a sanatorium in Switzerland.

Oscar Dana Allen was born on February 24 or 25, 1836, in Hebron, Maine.

In 1871, he received a PhD. in chemistry from Yale University and became a professor of analytical chemistry and metallurgy at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University from 1871 to 1887. His professional research was done chiefly on cesium and rubidium with the results published in the American Journal of Science. He also edited and revised the American edition of Fresenius' “Quantitative Analysis” in 1881. He was an amateur botanist interested in the study of bryology and corresponding with prominent bryologists and botanists of North America. He collected many species of mosses and hepatics and two of them were named in his honour, Thuidium allenii and Fontinalis allenii. In 1884, he moved to California and later to Washington, where he collected many western flowering plants for the Gray Herbarium of the Harvard University. With his son John A. Allen, he assembled the moss herbarium that was later purchased by the New York Botanical Garden. He was also a linguist interested in the study of obscure languages.

In 1861, he married Fidelia Totman. He died on February 19, 1913, in Ashford, Washington.