Following the Israeli sea-born raid, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered the border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip to be opened.

BBC: Witnesses cast doubt on Israel's convoy raid account

The youngest of seven hyperachieving children of a Vietnamese shrimper in Kemah, she had been born in exile on the South China Sea, her mother going into frightened labor shortly after their refugee boat was boarded by pirates.

NPR: In 'Challenger Park,' Mom Is an Astronaut

She was never on her knees, never humiliated by the Soviet collapse, even though she was born in Sebastopol a Black Sea port redolent with past Russian glory when it was part of the Soviet empire, and went to school there when it had become part of Ukraine.

ECONOMIST: Anastasia Baburova

Moscow (CNN) -- French-born actor Gerard Depardieu arrived in the Black Sea resort of Sochi Saturday, according to Russian state media, a day after he announced that he had accepted Russian citizenship.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

The spaceman was born in Saltburn-by-the-Sea and completed much of his education in England (Harrow and Cambridge University) before moving to the US, where he did a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

BBC: 'UK spaceman' Nicholas Patrick honoured

Mr Fowles was born in 1926 in the Essex suburb of Leigh-on-Sea, the son of a cigarmaker and tobacconist.

ECONOMIST: John Fowles

He thinks, if you were born in Putney, you saw the river every day, and imagined it widening out to the sea.

NEWYORKER: Invitation to a Beheading

Born 47 years ago into a poor family that migrated to Istanbul from a province on the Black Sea coast, Mr Erdogan got his street education as a teenager peddling lemonade and simits (sesame buns) in one of Istanbul's roughest districts.

ECONOMIST: Charlemagne