September 3rd

Ferdinand Porsche was born in Maffersdorfon in what is now the Czech Republic on this date in 1875. Porsche was an automotive engineer instrumental in the early development and racing of Austrian and German cars, notable at Austro-Daimler (1906-1923) and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (1923-1929). He developed the compressor for Mercedes-Benz and the torsion bar suspension with his own design company in 1931. And he was the leader in the development of the Volkswagen, which began production just before World War II.

It was, however, Ferdinand (Ferry) Porsche, the first Ferdinand Porsche’s son, who built the race and sports cars we recognize today, beginning in 1948.

It’s pronounced like the name Portia — por-sha.

Mark Hopkins was born on this date in 1813. Hopkins came to California in 1849, but to become a merchant not a miner. With Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford and Charles Crocker, Hopkins established the California Pacific to build east to Utah from Sacramento as part of the first transcontinental railroad. The Central Pacific eventually merged with the Southern Pacific, which they — The Big Four — also owned. Today it is part of the Union Pacific, one of the four remaining major rail lines.

Mort Walker is 87 today. He’s the creator of the comic strip Beetle Bailey.

Al Jardine, the only member of the original Beach Boys not related to the others, is 68 today. He sang the lead on “Help Me, Rhonda.”

Writer Malcolm Gladwell is 47.

Parts of what would become his first book first appeared in The New Yorker magazine, where he started as a staff writer in 1996. He received a million-dollar advance for that first book, published in 2000 as The Tipping Point. Since then, he’s written Blink (2005) and Outliers (2008). He said about his books: “The hope with Tipping Point was it would help the reader understand that real change was possible. With Blink, I wanted to get people to take the enormous power of their intuition seriously. My wish with Outliers is that it makes us understand how much of a group project success is.”

His most recent book is What the Dog Saw (2009).

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Charlie Sheen is 45.

Shaun White is 24.

The Treaty of Paris that formerly ended the American war with Great Britain was signed on this date in 1783, more than eight years after the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord.

Article 1:

His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.

September the 2nd

Former senator but still a jackass, Alan Simpson is 79 today. Why is someone 79 years old co-heading a commission on how to manage the deficit? (His co-chair is just 65. Have we no young people in this country? No one with a stake in the future?)

Hall of fame basketball coach John Thompson is 69 today.

Terry Bradshaw is 62, Mark Harmon 59 and Jimmy Connors 58 today.

Harmon’s father was “Old 98,” Tom Harmon, a football great at Michigan and for the L.A. Rams. Mark himself played quarterback at UCLA, where he graduated cum laude.

Keanu Reeves is 46.

And Salma Hayek is 44. Ms. Hayek received a best actress Oscar nomination for Frida.

It was on the morning of September 2, 1945, that the Japanese officially surrendered to Gen. Douglas MacArthur aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. MacArthur signed the articles at 9:07 am Tokyo time, ending World War II. President Truman declared Sunday, September 2nd V-J Day in the U.S.

September the first

Lily Tomlin is 71 today.

Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees is 64.

Barry, Maurice [d. 2003] and Robin Gibb — better known as the Bee Gees — are among the most successful vocal groups in rock and roll history. They rank sixth on the all-time top-sellers list, having sold 64 million albums to date. Only Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Garth Brooks and Paul McCartney have outsold the Bee Gees. The trio’s contributions to 1977’s Saturday Night Fever pushed that soundtrack album past the 40 million mark. It reigned as the top-selling album in history until Michael Jackson’s Thriller — an album that Jackson has acknowledged was inspired by Saturday Night Fever — surpassed it in the Eighties. Saturday Night Fever and 1979’s Spirits Having Flown combined to yield six #1 hits, making the Bee Gees the only group in pop history to write, produce and record that many consecutive chart-topping singles.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

Dr. Phil is 60.

Gloria Estefan is 53.

Dee Dee Myers — remember her? — she’s just 49.

The only undefeated heavyweight champion (1952-1956), Rocky Marciano was born on September 1st in 1923. He died in a small plane crash the day before he turned 46 in 1969. Marciano was the Seabiscuit of boxing.

For a heavyweight, he was considered too short (5-10 1/4) and too light (183-189 pounds) for most of his fights. His reach of only 68 inches was a distinct disadvantage (no heavyweight champ ever had such a short reach).

But how do you measure a person’s heart? In that area, Marciano possibly had the largest in the sport. He refused to stay down, and he refused to lose. He might be bloodied, but he wouldn’t be beaten.

ESPN Classic

Estee Lauder was born on the first day of September in 1908. She died in 2004.

The great labor leader Walter Reuther was born on the first day of September in 1907. Reuther died in a small plane crash in 1970.

President Nixon called Mr. Reuther’s death “a deep loss not only for organized labor but also for the cause of collective bargaining and the entire American process.” Mr. Nixon added:

“He was a man who was devoted to his cause, spoke for it with eloquence and worked for it tirelessly. While he was outspoken and controversial, even those who disagreed with him had great respect for his ability, integrity and persistence.”

The New York Times

Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in Chicago on the first day of September in 1875.

He had read Darwin’s book Descent of Man, and he was fascinated by the idea that human beings were related to apes. He began to wonder what might happen if a child from an excessively noble, well-bred family were somehow left in the jungle to be raised by apes. The result was his story “Tarzan of the Apes,” which filled an entire issue of All-Story magazine in October of 1912. It was one of the most popular issues the magazine had ever published, and within six-months, Edgar Rice Burroughs was a full-time writer producing about 400,000 words of short stories every year.

The Writer’s Almanac (2007)

Blind and deaf, Helen Keller graduated from Radcliffe on the first day of September in 1904.

On the first day of September in 1773, Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published in London.

Wheatley’s collection was the first volume of poetry by an African-American poet to be published. Regarded as a prodigy by her contemporaries, Wheatley was approximately twenty at the time of the book’s publication.

Born in the Senegambia region of West Africa, she was sold into slavery and transported to Boston at age seven or eight. Purchased off the slave ship by prosperous merchant John Wheatley and his wife Susanna in 1761, the young Phillis was soon copying the English alphabet on a wall in chalk.

Rather than fearing her precociousness, the Wheatleys encouraged it, allowing their daughter Mary to tutor Phillis in reading and writing. She also studied English literature, Latin, and the Bible—a strong education for any eighteenth-century woman. Wheatley’s first published poem, “On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin,” was published in Rhode Island’s Newport Mercury newspaper on December 21, 1767.

Today in History: Library of Congress

On the first day of September in 1939 Germany invaded Poland and ignited World War II.

The Sweeties grandmother was born on the first day of September. Happy Birthday, Grammy.

August the last

Broadcast journalist Daniel Schorr would have turned 94 today. He died in July.

One of just 13 men to win baseball’s triple crown (with Baltimore in 1966), Frank Robinson is 75 today. A few of the others: Cobb, Hornsby (twice), Foxx, Gehrig, Williams (twice), Mantle. The last, Carl Yastrzemski in 1967. Robinson won the MVP award both with Cincinnati (1961) in the National League and with Baltimore (1966) in the American.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Van Morrison is 65 today.

A paragon of blue-eyed soul, Van Morrison has been following his muse for four decades. His travels have led him down pathways where he’s explored soul, jazz, blues, rhythm & blues, rock and roll, Celtic folk, pop balladry, and more, forging a distinctive amalgam that has Morrison’s passionate self-expression at its core. With a minimum of hype or fanfare, working with a craftsman’s discipline and an artist-mystic’s creativity, Morrison has steadily amassed one of the great bodies of recorded work in the 20th century. His discography numbers roughly thirty albums, among them the deeply poetic song cycle Astral Weeks, the warm, pop-soul classic Moondance and such spiritually minded later works as the ambitious double-disc set Hymns to the Silence. At one extreme, Morrison has made raw, angry blues-rock with the British Invasion-era group Them. At the other, he has produced some of the most transcendent, even-toned soul music of the modern era as a solo artist.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Violinist Itzhak Perlman is also 65 today.

Richard Gere is 61. No Oscar nominations for Gere, but his actual middle name is Tiffany.

Five time Oscar nominee for best actor, two time winner, Frederic March was born on the last day of August in 1897. March won for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1931 and The Best Years of Our Lives in 1946. I met him while he was filming Hombre.

Radio and television performer Arthur Godfrey was born on the last day of August in 1903. Godfrey, seemingly forgotten now, was one of the biggest stars of early television.

Arthur Godfrey ranks as one of the important on-air stars of the first decade of American television. Indeed prior to 1959 there was no bigger TV luminary than this freckled faced, ukelele playing, host/pitchman. Through most of the decade of the 1950s Godfrey hosted a daily radio program and appeared in two top-ten prime time television shows, all for CBS. As the new medium was invading American households, there was something about Godfrey’s wide grin, his infectious chuckle, his unruly shock of red hair that made millions tune in not once, but twice a week.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications

The esteemed New Yorker editor William Shawn was born on the last day of August in 1907. His actual name is William Chon. Before The New Yorker, Shawn worked briefly at the Las Vegas, New Mexico, Optic.

Four days before he died in 1992, Shawn had lunch with Lillian Ross, and she showed him a book cover blurb she had written and asked if he would check it. She later wrote of that day, “He took out the mechanical pencil he always carried in his inside jacket pocket, and … made his characteristically neat proofreading marks on a sentence that said ‘the book remains as fresh and unique as ever.’ He changed it to read, ‘remains unique and as fresh as ever.’ ‘There are no degrees of uniqueness,’ Mr. Shawn said politely.”

The Writer’s Almanac (2006)

The lyricist Alan Jay Lerner was born on the last day of August in 1918.

He teamed up with a composer named Frederick Loewe and after a few moderately successful productions, they came out with Brigadoon (1947), about a two Americans who discover a mythical Scottish town that disappeared in 1747 and only returns to life for one day each century. One of the Americans falls in love with a girl from the town, and has to decide whether to stay with her and give up the modern world. Brigadoon was a big hit, and it contained Lerner and Loewe’s first hit song, “Almost Like Being in Love.”

But Lerner and Loewe’s biggest success was a musical version of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion: My Fair Lady, which premiered on Broadway on March 15, 1956. In that musical’s most famous song, Professor Henry Higgins teaches Eliza Doolittle to properly pronounce the phrase “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.” Lerner spent six weeks working on most of the songs in the musical, but he wrote “The Rain in Spain” in 10 minutes.

The Writer’s Almanac (2007)

Maria Montessori was born in Chiaravalle, Italy, on the last day of August in 1870.

As a doctor, she worked with children with special needs. And through her work with them, she became increasingly interested in education. She believed that children were not blank slates, but that they each had inherent, individual gifts. It was a teacher’s job to help children find these gifts, rather than dictating what a child should know. She emphasized independence, self-directed learning, and learning from peers. Children were encouraged to make decisions. She was one of the first to use child-sized tables and chairs in the classroom.
During World War II, Montessori was exiled from Italy because she was opposed to Mussolini’s fascism and his desire to make her a figurehead for the Italian government. She lived and worked in India for many years, and then in Holland. She died in 1952 at the age of 81.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Princess Diana died 13 years ago today.

Mary Ann Nichols, a prostitute, was found murdered in London’s East End on August 31, 1888. She is generally regarded as the first victim of Jack the Ripper.

The penultimate day of August

Teddy Ballgame is 92 today. Again as he has in recent years, Ted Williams will spend the day hanging out and just chillin’.

Williams played his entire career with the Red Sox. He was American League MVP twice, won the batting title six times and twice won the Triple Crown (led league in batting average, home runs and rbi). (The MVP years and the Triple Crown years were four separate seasons!) Williams career average was .344 and he hit 521 home runs.

Williams was the last hitter to bat over .400, hitting .406 for the season in 1941. “If I was being paid thirty-thousand dollars a year, the very least I could do was hit .400.”

Williams did not play during the 1943-1944-1945 seasons due to military service. And he only played 43 games over the 1952-1953 seasons, also due to military service. Nearly five years between age 24 and 34 missing from his career. Had he been available to play those seasons he might have reached Ruth’s 714 home runs.

It’s also the birthday —

… of Ellen Muriel Deason, known to us as Kitty Wells, and famous for “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” Miss Wells is 91 today.

It wasn’t God who made Honky Tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they’re still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong

… of Bill Daily. He was the goofy other guy on I Dream of Jeannie, and the neighbor on The Bob Newhart Show. Daily is 83.

… of the other Buffet, Warren. The one who’s not wasting away again in Margaritaville. The billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway is 80.

… of the cartoonist R. Crumb, 67.

… of Peggy Lipton. The original Mod Squad member is 63.

… of Lewis Black. The comedian, and regular on The Daily Show, is 62.

… of basketball hall-of-famer Robert Parish. He’s 57. Parish played in 1,611 NBA games, the record.

… of Cameron Diaz. Princess Fiona is 38.

… of Andy Roddick. He’s 28.

Fred MacMurray was born on this date in 1908. MacMurray required that all his scenes for My Three Sons be filmed at one time. After MacMurray was done, the rest of the cast started filming the shows in the normal sequence. IMDb has MacMurray saying: “The two films I did with Billy Wilder, ‘Double Indemnity’ and the ‘The Apartment’ are the only two parts I did in my entire career that required any acting.” It showed Fred, it showed.

Oscar-nominee Raymond Massey was born on this date in 1896. Massey received the nomination for Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Massey, related to the Masseys of Massey-Ferguson (tractors and such), was in a lot of westerns and did a lot of TV.

Best actress Oscar-winner Shirley Booth was born on this date in 1898. Booth won the award for Come Back, Little Sheba. Sadly, she’s probably better known for playing the maid Hazel on the sitcom.

The Kingfish, Huey Long, was born on August 30th in 1893. Governor of Louisiana 1928-1932 and U.S. Senator 1932-1935, Long was assassinated at age 42. Historians have argued whether he was dictator, demagogue, messiah or populist. I’d say he was just a little more megalomaniacal than any other politician.

Ty Cobb made his major league debut 105 years ago today.

29 August

Senator John McCain is 74-years-old today.

Seven-time Oscar nominee for best actress, Ingrid Bergman was born on this date in 1915. She won the award three times: Gaslight, Anastasia, Murder on the Orient Express. No, she was not nominated for Casablanca. Ms. Bergman’s last role was as Golda Meir in 1982. She died that same year on her birthday, August 29.

Charlie Parker was born on this date in 1920.

Charlie Parker was one of the most influential improvising soloists in jazz, and a central figure in the development of bop in the 1940s. A legendary figure in his own lifetime, he was idolized by those who worked with him, and he inspired a generation of jazz performers and composers.

PBS – JAZZ A Film By Ken Burns

Parker died in 1955.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Ruth Jones was born on this date in 1924.

Dinah Washington skirted the boundaries of blues, jazz and popular music, becoming the most popular black female recording artist of the ’50s.

She changed her name from Ruth Jones upon joining jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton’s band in 1943. After leaving Hampton in 1946, she began her own recording career, leading to Top 10 R&B hits in “Baby Get Lost” (No. 1, 1949), “Trouble in Mind” (No. 4, 1952), “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” (No. 4 R&B, No. 8 pop, 1959), and “This Bitter Earth” (No. 1 R&B, No. 24 pop, 1960).

In 1960, Washington also sang two No. 1 R&B duets with Brook Benton, “Baby (You’ve Got What It Takes)” (No. 5 pop) and “A Rockin’ Good Way” (No. 7 pop).

Washington died in 1963 after mixing alcohol and pills.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

Sir Richard Attenborough is 87 today. Attenborough won Oscars for best director and best picture for Gandhi. He’s acted in several dozen films, most notably as Roger Bartlett in The Great Escape and Mr. Hammond in the Jurassic Park films.

Two-time Oscar nominee for director, William Friedkin is 75 today. He won for The French Connection; he was nominated for The Exorcist.

Oscar nominee Elliott Gould is 72 today. He was nominated for a supporting role in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Gould was married to Barbra Streisand 1963-1971.

Actress Rebecca DeMornay is 51. That was her opposite Tom Cruise in Risky Business and most famously as the twisted nanny in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.

Lea Michel of Glee is 24.

August 29th is the birthday of Michael Jackson. He would have been 52 today.

Best line of the day

“Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., born 201 years ago today in Cambridge, Massachusetts, quoted at The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

“In The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872) [Holmes] wrote, ‘We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.’ ”

Holmes wrote poetry, helped found The Atlantic, practiced medicine, taught at Harvard Medical School, and was the father of a supreme court justice.

The 240th day of the year is the birthday

… of German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born in Frankfurt on this date in 1749. Goethe said, “One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”

… of Mother Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, the first American-born saint, born in New York City on this date in 1774.

… of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, born near Tula on this date in 1828.

… of ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson, born in Jamestown, New York, on this date in 1908.

… of Nancy Kulp, Miss Hathaway of The Beverly Hillbillies, was born on August 28th in 1921. She died in 1991.

Eilleen Regina Edwards was born 45 years ago today. We know her better as Shania Twain.

Jack Black is 41.

LeAnn Rimes is 28.

August 27th

Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th President of the United States, was born 102 years ago today. He died, at age 64, in January 1973.

William Least Heat-Moon was born as William Trogdon 71 years ago today. He’s the author, among other works, of Blue Highways, an excellent travel memoir published in 1982. (The roads in blue on highway maps go to the out-of-way places Least Heat-Moon wrote about.)

Daryl Dragon, the Captain of the Captain and Tennille, is 68 today.

Once-upon-a-time sex kitten Tuesday Weld is 67. According to IMDb, “At nine years of age she suffered a nervous breakdown, at ten she started heavy drinking. One year later she began to have affairs, and at the age of twelve she tried to commit suicide.” Weld turned down the role of Lolita and of Bonnie in Bonnie and Clyde.

Paul Reubens, Pee-Wee Herman, is 58.

Chandra Wilson of Grey’s Anatomy is 41.

Home Alone

Macaulay Culkin is 30 today.

Holy James Bond, Batman

Sean Connery is 80 today!

August 24th

Ron, i.e., Rupert Grint, is 22 today.

Baseball hall-of-fame inductee Cal Ripken Jr. is 50.

Steve Guttenberg is 52. According to IMDb, Guttenberg doesn’t have a single award of any kind to his credit.

Marlee Matlin is 45. She has a best actress Oscar for Children of a Lesser God.

Dave Chappelle is 37.

Kenny Baker is 72 today. He was R2D2 in the “Star Wars” movies.

Howard Zinn was born on August 24th in 1922; he died in January.

He’s the author of A People’s History of the United States (1980). It has sold more than a million copies and continues to sell about 100,000 copies each year.

Zinn wrote more than 20 books, including the memoir You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train (1994). Last year, he said: “I think it’s very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name. Socialism had a good name in this country. Socialism had Eugene Debs. It had Clarence Darrow. It had Mother Jones. It had Emma Goldman. It had several million people reading socialist newspapers around the country. Socialism basically said, hey, let’s have a kinder, gentler society. Let’s share things. Let’s have an economic system that produces things not because they’re profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism because you have to go beyond capitalism.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Every American should read A People’s History of the United States.

August 23rd is the birthday

… of Barbara Eden. “Jeannie” is 76.

… of football hall-of-famer Sonny Jurgensen, 76 today.

… of Linda Thompson. The folk/rock musician, who with then husband Richard made one of the great rock albums — Shoot Out the Lights, is 63 today. She was voted best female singer of 1982 in Rolling Stone.

… of Shelley Long. The star of Cheers and numerous films is 61. Long received six Emmy nominations for her portrayal of Diane Chambers, winning once.

… of Kobe Bryant. He’s 32.

Gene Kelly, the wonderful singer/dancer/actor, was born on this date in 1912. Kelly is most famous for Singin’ in the Rain but received his sole Oscar nomination for best actor for Anchors Aweigh. He died in 1996.

August 21st in History and Birth

1680: The Pueblo Revolt

On this date in 1831 “… a 30-year-old black slave named Nat Turner, supported by about 60 followers armed with guns, clubs, axes and swords, launched the bloodiest slave revolt in American history.” Joshua Zeitz has more on the revolt, its context, aftermath and legacy at AmericanHeritage.com.

1858: Lincoln-Douglas

Kenny Rogers is 72 today.

Patty McCormack is 65. The actress, known now as Patricia McCormack, was nominated for the supporting actress Oscar as an 11-year-old for her performance in The Bad Seed.

Kim Cattrall of Sex in the City is 54.

Hayden Panettiere of Heroes is 21.

William “Count” Basie was born on this date in 1904.

Count Basie was a leading figure of the swing era in jazz and, alongside Duke Ellington, an outstanding representative of big band style.

Quotation from the PBS website for Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns. The page has a nice biography of Basie with some audio clips, including Basie’s 1937 recording of “One O’Clock Jump,” one of NPR’s 100 “most important American musical works of the 20th century.”

Wilt Chamberlain was born in Philadelphia 74 years ago today. Usually called “The Stilt” because it rhymed with Wilt, Chamberlain actually preferred the nickname “The Big Dipper.”

• Scored 800 points in first 16 high school games.
• Unanimous All-American at Kansas 1957, 1958, averaging nearly 30 points per game.
• Four-time NBA MVP.
• Scored 31,419 points (30.1 ppg) in 1,045 pro games, including 100 in one game against the Knicks.
• All-time scoring leader when he retired, since surpassed.

Chamberlain died in 1999.

Hawaii entered the Union as the 50th state on this date in 1959. The eight major islands in the chain are Ni’ihau, Kaua’i, O’ahu, Moloka’i, Lāna’i, Kaho’olawe, Maui and Hawai’i.

August 19th

Bill Clinton is 64 today.

It’s also the birthday

… of Ginger Baker of Cream and Blind Faith. Peter Edward Baker, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, is 71. Rolling Stone says Baker is the third greatest rock drummer ever (after Neil Peart of Rush and John Bonham of Led Zeppelin).

… of Johnny Nash. He’s 70.

I can see clearly now, the rain has gone
I can see all obstacles in my way

… of Jill St. John; she’s 70. A sixties hottie, St. John, real name Jill Oppenheim, reportedly has an IQ of 162.

… of Fred Dalton Thompson. The actor and former U.S. Senator is 68.

… of Tipper Gore. She’s 62.

… of Kyra Sedgwick, 45.

… of Matthew Perry. The Friend is 41.

Gene Roddenberry was born on August 19th in 1921. The creator of Star Trek died in 1991.

The poet Ogden Nash was born on this date in 1902.

Candy
Is Dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.

From his “Reflections on Ice-Breaking.” Or, from “The Firefly”:

The firefly’s flame Is something for which science has no name
I can think of nothing eerier
Than flying around with an unidentified glow on a
person’s posteerier.

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was born on this date in 1883. She died in 1971.

The British landed on the Patuxent River in Maryland on August 19th in 1814. It took them five days to reach Washington. Arsonist bastards.

August 18th

Today is the birthday

… of Rosalynn Carter; she’s 83.

… of Roman Polanski, 77.

… of Rafer Johnson. The decathlete is 75. It was Johnson who lit the Olympic torch in Los Angeles in 1984.

… of Robert Redford; he’s 73. Redford has been nominated for two directing Oscars, winning for Ordinary People. His only acting nomination was for The Sting.

… of Rockabilly great Johnny Preston, singer of the classic “Running Bear.” He’s 71. (Here’s a link to YouTube, audio only. My god we were a simpler country 50 years ago.)

… of Martin Mull; he’s 67.

… of Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, 49.

… of Edward Norton; he’s 41. Norton has both a leading and a supporting Oscar nomination but no wins yet.

… of Christian Slater; he too is 41.

Roberto Clemente should have been 76 today. The Puerto Rican born Baseball Hall of Fame inductee won four National League batting titles, was MVP in 1966 and finished his shortened career with exactly 3,000 hits. Clemente died at age 38 in a plane crash while delivering supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua on New Year Year’s Eve 1972.

Antonio Salieri was born on this date in 1750. After his characterization as a villain in Peter Shaffer’s play and film Amadeus, it seems Salieri has made a bit of a comeback. According to a December 2003 article at Guardian Unlimited and other sources, while there was competition between the upstart Mozart and the established artist Salieri in Vienna, there was cooperation, too; that is, what transpired between them was typical office politics.

Meriwether Lewis was born on this date in 1774. Lewis had this to say on his 31st birthday 205 years ago today, camped just east of Lemhi Pass near the present-day Montana-Idaho border. (From the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online at the University of Nebraska.)

This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestoed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.—

His birthday doubts are made all the more poignant, of course, with the knowledge that just more than four years later Lewis took his own life at age 35.

August 17th

Maureen O’Hara is 90 today. Once voted one of the five most beautiful women in the world, Miss O’Hara is proabably best known now as Natalie Wood’s unbelieving mother in the classic Miracle on 34th Street (filmed when O’Hara was 26); or perhaps as Esmeralda to Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul is 78.

Robert De Niro is 67 today. De Niro has been nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar five times, winning for Raging Bull in 1981. He also won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role as the young Vito Corleone in Godfather II. De Niro’s other nominations were for Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Awakenings and Cape Fear.

Belinda Carlisle is 52.

Novelist Jonathan Franzen is 51 today. His The Corrections won the 2001 National Book Award.

Sean Penn is 50 today. Penn has been nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar five times, winning for Mystic River and Milk. Penn’s other nominations were for Dead Man Walking, Sweet and Lowdown and I Am Sam.

Football coach/commentator Jon Gruden is 47.

Davy Crockett — frontiersman, soldier, three-term congressman, restless soul — was born on this day in 1786. As congressman 1827-1831 and 1833-1835, Crockett opposed many of President Andrew Jackson policies, particularly the Indian Removal Act. Crockett published A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett. Written by Himselfin 1834. When he lost reelection that year he went to Texas, where he died at the Alamo on March 6, 1836.

After seeing Mae’s jewelry the coat check girl exclaims, “Goodness, what lovely diamonds!” Mae replies, “Goodness had nothing to do with it.” That’s screen legend Mae West in Night After Night. Ms. West was born on this date in 1893.

Before August 17, 1896, Americans had little interest in Alaska, a far off “district”—not even a territory—full of wolves and ice and forests. That attitude started to change [114] years ago today, when a Tagish Indian known as Skookum Jim spotted something shimmering among the stones in a creek near the Yukon River. The Klondike Gold Rush began as soon as news of the discovery reached the states, and between 1897 and 1899 1 in every 700 Americans abandoned home and set out for the “Golden River.”

There’s more at American Heritage, including this nugget: “At a time when workers were lucky to make 10 cents an hour, gold was worth $17 an ounce.”

July 24th

Today it’s the birthday

… of cartoonist Pat Oliphant, 75.

… of Ruth Buzzi, 74.

… of Cosmo Kramer. Michael Richards is 61 today.

… of Wonder Woman. Lynda Carter is 59.

… of Pam Tillis, 53.

… of Barry Bonds. He’s 46.

… of Kristin Chenoweth. The Tony award-winner from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, is 42, all 4-foot-11 of her.

… of J Lo. Jennifer Lopez is 41.

… of Anna Paquin. An Oscar winner at age 11, she’s now 28.

Amelia Earhart was born on July 24th in 1897. She disappeared at age 40.

It was on this date in 1847 that Brigham Young gazed at Utah’s Valley of the Great Salt Lake and made his famous declaration: “This is the place.”

July 23rd

Daniel Radcliffe is 21 today.

At the other end of the acting spectrum, Gloria DeHaven is 85.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is 74. Ginsburg (76) and Scalia (73) are older; Breyer will be 71 next month.

Actor Ronny Cox is 72. Cox, a Cloudcroft, New Mexico native, is perhaps most famous as Lt. Andrew Bogomil of the Beverly Hills Police Department, but he has more than 120 credits listed at IMDB.

Don Imus is 70 today.

Woody Harrelson is 49. Harrelson was nominated for best actor for The People vs. Larry Flynt and won one Emmy for playing Woody on Cheers.

Saul Hudson is 45. He’s better known as Slash of Guns N’ Roses.

Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman is 43.

Alison Krauss is 39.

Raymond Chandler was born on July 23rd in 1888.

His parents were Irish, and after his father left the family, his mom moved them back to Ireland, and he grew up there and in England. He moved back to America and settled in California.

He wrote pulp fiction about the city of Los Angeles and a detective there named Philip Marlowe. Chandler’s first novel was The Big Sleep (1939), which sold well and was made into a movie in 1946 with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall — William Faulkner co-wrote the screenplay. Chandler wrote seven more novels featuring Philip Marlowe, who became the quintessential “hard-boiled” private eye, tough and street-smart and full of wise cracks. In Farewell, My Lovely (1940), Marlowe says: “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

July 22nd

Bob Dole is 87 today.

Oscar de la Renta is 78.

Oscar-winning actress Louise Fletcher, Nurse Ratched, is 76.

Tom Robbins is 73 today.

He’s known for novels such as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994), and Villa Incognito (2003). He says that when he starts a book, he has no idea of what the story will be. He never outlines and never revises. He just works on each sentence until he thinks it’s perfect, sometimes for more than an hour, and then he moves on to the next one. He said, “I’m probably more interested in sentences than anything else in life.”

The Writer’s Almanac (2009)

70. How old is Jeopardy host Alex Trebek today?

One-time supporting actor Oscar nominee Albert Brooks, Danny Glover and Don Henley of The Eagles all turn 63 today

Author S.E. Hinton is 62 today. She was born Susan Eloise Hinton.

Growing up, she loved to read, but her biggest dream in life was to be a cowboy. So she wrote a couple of books about cowboys, and then when she was 15 she started working on a book called The Outsiders. She wrote and edited much of her novel during her junior year of high school, the same year that she got a D in her creative writing class. The Outsiders was the story of two rival gangs, based on the gangs at her high school in Tulsa — one of them was a group of kids from working-class families, the other, children of rich families.

The Outsiders was published in 1967, during her first year of college at the University of Tulsa. It became one of the most popular young adult books ever, selling more than 14 million copies, and continues to sell hundreds of thousands each year.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Two-time Oscar nominee for best actor Willem Dafoe, aka the Green Goblin, aka Jesus, is 55.

David Spade is 46.

Selena Gomez is 18 today. She started in show business on Barney & Friends at age 7.

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on July 22nd in 1890. She lived until January 22, 1995.

Amy Vanderbilt was born on July 22nd in 1908.

Best Jeopardy answer of the day

70

July 21st

It’s the birthday

… of Janet Reno, the only woman attorney general of the United States. She is 72.

… of actor Edward Herrmann. He is 67.

… of actor Wendell Burton, 63. Burton was Liza Minnelli’s boyfriend in The Sterile Cuckoo.

… of Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau. He’s 62.

… of Yusuf Islam, also 62. He was born Steven Demetre Georgiou. Much of his life he was known as Cat Stevens and he sold 60 million albums. Stevens wrote “The First Cut is the Deepest,” a hit for four artists, most recently Sheryl Crow. In 2006, he returned to music after nearly 30 years; his new stage name is Yusuf.

… of Mork. Robin Williams is 59. Williams has been nominated for the best actor Oscar three times without winning. He did win the best supporting actor Oscar for Good Will Hunting.

… of Jon Lovitz. He’s 53. Fresh!

… of Brandi Chastain. She’s 42.

… and of C.C. Sabathia, 30.

Ernest Hemingway was born on this date in 1899. He died a few weeks before his 62nd birthday in 1961. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.” The New York Times has an extraordinary wealth of reviews, articles, interviews and other material collected on Hemingway.

Marshall McLuhan was born on this date in 1911.

July 20th

Cormac McCarthy is 77 today, Dianna Rigg is 72 and Carlos Santana is 63.

July 19th

George McGovern, a very good man if a very poor presidential candidate, is 88 today.

Florencia Bisenta de Casillas Martinez Cardona was born in El Paso 69 years ago today. We know her as Vikki Carr. She had three top 40 hits, including “It Must Be Him,” which topped at number 3 in 1966.

Howard Schultz, the developer of Starbucks, is 57 today.

Anthony Edwards, “Goose,” is 48 today.

The artist Edgar Degas was born in Paris on this date in 1834. He is especially identified with dance as a subject. Degas is considered an Impressionist, even a founder of the school, but he rejected the term. That’s Degas’s L’Absinthe.

Sam Colt was born on this date in 1814.

Sam Colt’s success story began with the issuance of a U.S. patent in 1836 for the Colt firearm equipped with a revolving cylinder containing five or six bullets. Colt’s revolver provided its user with greatly increased firepower. Prior to his invention, only one- and two-barrel flintlock pistols were available. In the 163 years that have followed, more than 30 million revolvers, pistols, and rifles bearing the Colt name have been produced, almost all of them in plants located in the Hartford, Connecticut, area. The Colt revolving-cylinder concept is said to have occurred to Sam Colt while serving as a seaman aboard the sailing ship Corvo. There he observed a similar principle in the workings of the ship’s capstan. During his leisure hours, Sam carved a wooden representation of his idea. The principle was remarkable in its simplicity and its applicability to both longarms and sidearms.

Colt History

Yikes, we’re getting old

Nelson Mandela is 92 today.

John Glenn is 89.

Dion (DiMucci) of Dion and The Belmonts is 71.

James Brolin is 70.

Joe Torre is 70 as well.

Martha (Reeves) of Martha and The Vandellas is 69.

Author Elizabeth Gilbert is 41.

Even M.I.A. is 35.