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Robert Gilbert Vansittart, 1st Baron Vansittart, was born on June 25, 1881, at Wilton House, Farnham, Surrey, England.

He was a British diplomat and author. He was educated at Eton College, where he was a member of the exclusive Eton Society and Captain of the Oppidans. He spent two years in Europe, improving his proficiency in French and German and studying the political systems. In 1902, he entered the Foreign Office and was appointed to the British Embassy in Paris in 1903. He then served at the embassies in Tehran (1907-1909) and Cairo (1909-1911). During the First World War, he was joint head of the contraband department and then head of the Prisoner of War Department under Lord Newton. He was the first secretary at the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920) and principal private secretary to Lord Curzon (1920–1924) and successive Prime Ministers Stanley Baldwin (1928–1929) and Ramsay MacDonald (1929–1930). From 1930 to 1938, Vansittart was appointed Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, supervising the work of Britain's diplomatic service. Vansittart was appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order (1906), a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (1920), a Companion of the Order of the Bath (1927), a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (1929), a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (1931), and a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (1938). He was sworn into the Privy Council in 1940 and raised to the peerage as Baron Vansittart of Denham in the County of Buckingham in 1941. Vansittart wrote novels, verses, and plays, e.g., “Les Pariahs” (1902), "Collected Poems of Robert Vansittart" (1934), “Dead Heat” (1939), and "Black Record: German Past and Present" (1941). His autobiography, “The Mist Procession”, was published posthumously in 1958.

In 1921, he married Gladys May Heppenheimer (1891–1928), and in 1931, he remarried Sarita Enriqueta Ward (1891–1985). He died on February 14, 1957, in Denham Place, Denham, Buckinghamshire, England.

Frederick Henry Vane was born in 1807 in Bassenthwaite, Cumberland, England to a British politician, landowner and aristocrat Frederick Fletcher Vane, 2nd baronet of Hutton, and Lady Hannah Bowerbank. In 1849 he fought a duel with J. Baxter of the Royal Canadian Rifles. He passed away in 1894 in Brighton, Sussex, United Kingdom.

Ernest Van den Broeck was born on December 1, 1851, in Brussels, Belgium.

He was a Belgian geologist, paleontologist, and botanist. He served as a Curator at the Royal Museum of Natural History of Belgium (1879-1919) and the first Secretary-general of the Belgian Society of Geology, Paleontology, and Hydrology (1903). He founded the Belgian Botanical Society and created a "Japanese-Alpine Garden" at his home in Genval. He was also a great collector of Japanese art, and his collections form the basis of the Far Eastern section of the Royal Museum of Natural History. He was the author of numerous geological and botanical publications, e.g., "Une visite à la station zoologique et à l'aquarium de Naples" (1882), "Explication de la feuille de Bilsen" (1883), and "Les cavernes et les rivières souterraines de la Belgique" (1910). In 1989, the Society created a Van den Broeck Medal in his honour.

He died on September 12, 1932, in Genval, Belgium.

Vancouver was a naval officer and explorer, who widely explored the North American Pacific coast, including much of coastal British Columbia, and wrote about his experiences.