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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

… 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.

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.

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.

… 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.

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.

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.