About Charles Van Doren
Charles Lincoln Van Doren was an American writer and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s. In 1959 he testified before the United States Congress that he had been given the correct answers by the producers of the NBC quiz show Twenty-One. Terminated by NBC, he joined Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. in 1959, becoming a vice-president and writing and editing many books before retiring in 1982. On November 28, 1956, Van Doren made his first appearance on the NBC quiz show Twenty-One. Twenty-One was not Van Doren's first game show interest. However, Van Doren reminded people that his first job (though short-lived) was as a newswriter, before he began doing small pieces for a weekend cultural program, Wide Wide World, also hosted by Garroway. In January 1957, Van Doren entered a winning streak on Twenty-One that ultimately earned him $129,000 (the equivalent of $1.5 million today) and made him famous, including an appearance on the cover of Time on February 11, 1957.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.