Which American writer lived longer, pediatrician Benjamin Spock or Alex Haley?
Benjamin McLane Spock
Benjamin Spock
Benjamin McLane Spock (May 2, 1903 – March 15, 1998) was an American pediatrician whose book "Baby and Child Care" (1946) is one of the best-sellers of all time.
 The book's premise to mothers is that "you know more than you think you do."
Alex Haley
Alexander Murray Palmer "Alex" Haley (August 11, 1921 – February 10, 1992) was an American writer and the author of the 1976 book "."
 ABC adapted the book as a television miniseries of the same name and aired it in 1977 to a record-breaking audience of 130 million viewers.
 In the United States the book and miniseries raised the public awareness of African American history and inspired a broad interest in genealogy and family history.
Smiley (alligator)
Smiley (Swedish: "Smilet" ) was an American alligator ("Alligator mississippiensis") that lived in captivity in the Maritime Museum of Gothenburg, Sweden.
 Smiley arrived in Gothenburg from the United States in 1924, at approximately the age of two, and died on 9 February 1987.
 She received the name "Smiley" in 1970 when the newspaper "Expressen" asked readers for appropriate names for the alligator.
 At the time of her death at the age of 65, she held the record of being the oldest living alligator in captivity, an honor that landed her a spot in the "Guinness Book of World Records".
 (There are, however, records of alligators that have lived longer since her death).
 At the time of her death Smiley weighed 75 kg and measured 265 cm , which is small for North American alligators (males can grow to a length and weight double that).
 Only after her death and necropsy did doctors establish that Smiley was a female. Roots: The Next Generations
Roots: The Next Generations is an American television miniseries, introduced in 1979, continuing, from 1882 to the 1960s, the fictionalized story of the family of Alex Haley and their life in Henning, Lauderdale County, Tennessee, USA.
 (Henning is about 48 miles north of Memphis, which is on the Mississippi River and in the southwest corner of the state, and which was then the largest city in it.)
 This sequel to the 1977 miniseries is based on the last seven chapters of Haley's novel entitled "" plus additional material by Haley. Free-range parenting
Free-range parenting is the concept of raising children in the spirit of encouraging them to function independently and with little parental supervision, in accordance of their age of development and with a reasonable acceptance of realistic personal risks.
 Seen as the opposite of helicopter parenting, the idea was popularized by pediatrician Benjamin Spock.
 A notable text of the movement is Lenore Skenazy's book "Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry" (2009). Simon Haley
Simon Alexander Haley (March 8, 1892 – August 19, 1973) was a professor of agriculture, and father of writer Alex Haley.
 He was born in Savannah, Tennessee, to farmer Alexander "Alec" Haley and his wife Queen (Davy) Haley (née Jackson).
 Both his parents were born as slaves, and both apparently fathered by white slave owners.
 Simon attended Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, at age 15.
 After enlisting in the military during World War I, he married Bertha George Palmer, also a student from Lane.
 Simon then finished his master's degree in agriculture at Cornell University.
 Bertha died in 1932, and Simon was remarried two years later to professor Zeona Hatcher.
 Simon Haley held positions at various southern universities including Alabama A&M just north of Huntsville, Alabama.
 He was buried at Little Rock National Cemetery in Little Rock, Arkansas. Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen
Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen  (November 29, 1900 – March 24, 1938) was a Faroese writer.
 He has a distinct place in Scandinavian literature, as he is the only Faroese writer to achieve international best-seller status.
 This status derives from his sole novel, "Barbara: Roman" (1939; translated, 1948 and 1993), which has the added cachet of being one of the few Scandinavian novels to be translated twice into English within the space of fifty years.
 The novel was translated into five other languages shortly after the first edition in the Danish language.
 It was also adapted as a motion picture directed by Nils Malmros in 1997 (see "Barbara").
 These facts, together with Jacobsen's essays, a study of the Faroe Islands published in the guise of a travel guide, and a volume of his letters, are sufficient to suggest that had he lived longer, he would have been one of the outstanding literary figures in Scandinavia in the twentieth century.
 He was one of five Faroese writers, all born between 1900 and 1903, who represented a remarkable blossoming of literature in a country which had no tradition of literature in a modern sense.
 Jacobsen, together with William Heinesen, Christian Matras, Heðin Brú, and Martin Joensen, created modern Faroese literature, whether writing in Danish, as did Jacobsen and Heinesen, or the Faroese language, as did the others. Alex Haley's Queen
Alex Haley's Queen (also known as Queen) is a 1993 American television miniseries that aired in three installments on February 14, 16, and 18 on CBS.
 The miniseries is an adaptation of the novel "", by Alex Haley and David Stevens.
 The novel is based on the life of Queen Jackson Haley, Haley's paternal grandmother.
 Alex Haley died in February 1992 before completing the novel.
 It was later finished by David Stevens and published in 1993.
 Stevens also wrote the screenplay for the miniseries. Kunta Kinte
Kunta Kinte ( 1750 – 1822; ) is a character in the novel "" by American author Alex Haley.
 Haley claimed that Kunta Kinte was based on one of his ancestors: a Gambian man who was born in 1750, enslaved and taken to America and who died in 1822.
 Haley said that his account of Kunta's life in "Roots" was a mixture of fact and fiction.
 The extent to which Kunta Kinte is based on fact is disputed. Michael Ferber
Michael Kelvin Ferber (born July 1, 1944) was the youngest of the five defendants in the federal anti-draft trial in the spring of 1968 in Boston, Massachusetts.
 The trial attracted national attention because one of the defendants was Dr. Benjamin Spock, the well-known pediatrician and author of the best-selling "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care".
 The other defendants were the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., chaplain of Yale University; Mitchell Goodman, novelist and teacher; and Marcus Raskin, a lawyer who served briefly on the U.S. National Security Council under Kennedy and co-founded the Institute for Policy Studies.
 The trial was known as "The Spock Trial" and the defendants as "The Boston Five".