February 24th

Abe Vigoda is 94 today.

Steven Hill, District Attorney Adam Schiff of Law and Order, is 93 today.

Dominic Chianese, Corrado “Uncle Junior” Soprano, is 84.

Edward James Olmos is 68.

Honus Wagner Plaque

Honus Wagner was born on this date in 1874. He was one of the original five inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame – with Cobb, Johnson, Mathewson and Ruth. He was the first to have his name etched on a Louisville Slugger.

Hall of Fame skipper John McGraw called Honus Wagner “The nearest thing to a perfect player no matter where his manager chose to play him”. Honus Wagner played 21 seasons, primarily with his hometown team the Pittsburgh Pirates, and was the total package. He could hit for average and power and could change the dynamics of a game on the base paths and in the field– he played every position on the diamond in his major league career except for catcher.

Baseball Hall of Fame

Winslow Homer was born on this date in 1836. That’s his Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), 1873-1876, below.

From the late 1850s until his death in 1910, Winslow Homer produced a body of work distinguished by its thoughtful expression and its independence from artistic conventions. A man of multiple talents, Homer excelled equally in the arts of illustration, oil painting, and watercolor. Many of his works—depictions of children at play and in school, of farm girls attending to their work, hunters and their prey—have become classic images of nineteenth-century American life. Others speak to more universal themes such as the primal relationship of man to nature.

The National Gallery of Art

Breezing Up (A Fair Wind) Winslow Homer The National Gallery of Art
Breezing Up (A Fair Wind)
Winslow Homer
The National Gallery of Art