Corrado Conti, an Italian horn-player studied music at the Conservatorio di Parma. He founded an orchestra for light music and also played for the Orchestra Teatro della Scala. In the 1960s, he entered the Casa Ricordi as a composer of popular songs, sometimes collaborating with Danele Pace and Mario Panzeri of the famous Pace-Panzeri -Pilat trio. Probably his best-known song, written in 1968 with Francesco Cassano, was “Melodia,” sung originally by Isabella Iannetti, but made famous by Engelbert Humperdinck’s version, “The Way it Used to Be.”

Geoffrey Cook was born in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

He is a Canadian poet, translator, and educator. He studied at the University of Toronto (B.A. in Literary Studies) and Carleton University (M.A. in Comparative Literature). His poems and translations have appeared widely in such journals as The Antigonish Review, Descant, Matrix, Fiddlehead and Pottersfield Portfolio, and in the anthologies of Atlantic Canadian poetry, Landmarks (2001) and Coastlines (2002). His essays, reviews and interviews have been published in Books in Canada and in The Danforth Review, an online journal, where he was a poetry editor for five years. Cook is the author of the collections of poems “Postscript” (2004) and "Afterwords" (2018). He has been teaching in the English Department of John Abbott College in Montreal since 1996. Cook resides in Sainte Adèle, Quebec.

Dr. George Hammell Cook was born on January 5, 1818, in Hanover, New Jersey.

He was the State Geologist and Vice President of Rutgers College. In 1836, he became a civil engineer. In 1839, he graduated from the Troy Polytechnic Institute, New York. Afterwards, he started to teach at the institute and in 1842, he became its president. Later he became president of the Albany Academy, and in 1853, he was made professor of chemistry and natural philosophy at Rutgers College, New Jersey. In 1854, he was appointed State Geologist of New Jersey and many topographical maps of the state were published under his supervision. In 1864, he became Vice-President of Rutgers College. He organized the State Board of Agriculture and in 1866, he became the Chief Director of the New Jersey State Weather Service. He was also a delegate to the International Geological Congress in Paris in 1878. Dr. Cook was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the author of many papers and addresses. He received the degree of LL.D. from Union College and was made Doctor of Philosophy by the New York University.

In 1846, he married Mary Halsey Thomas (1821–1898). He died on September 22, 1889, in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

John Mason Cook was born on January 13, 1834, in Market Harborough, Leicester, England.

He was the son of Thomas Cook (1808-1892), the founder of the Thomas Cook Travel Agency. In 1865, he was appointed head of a new office on Fleet Street, London. An energetic man, he made an immediate impact, and the subsequent growth of the business was due much to the son as the father. In 1871, he entered into full partnership with his father and the firm became known as Thomas Cook & Son, with invested capital of over £250,000. He travelled on business an average of 50,000 miles a year between 1855 and 1873. The travel agency offered railway excursions around Britain, tours of Europe and in 1866, it took tourists to America to see scenes of the recent Civil war. By the end of the decade, it was taking people to Egypt and the Holy Land. In 1878, Cook expanded the business into a lucrative foreign banking and money exchange department and helped develop travellers' cheques. He was also a Temperance President. At the time of his death, the gross value of his estate was assessed at £390,000. Cook was succeeded in business by his three sons: Frank Henry, Ernest Edward, and Thomas Albert.

In 1861, he married Emma Hodges (1834-1902). He died on March 4, 1899, in Walton on Thames, Chertsey, Surrey, England.