95 today and still making music.
Pinetop will be appearing this Saturday at the Mont Tremblant, Quebec, Blues Festival. Next week he’ll be at the Master Musicians Festival in Somerset, Kentucky. August 1st and 2nd at Notodden Blues Festival in Notodden, Norway.
Historian and author David McCullough is 75 today. His works include some of the best—and best-selling—biographies ever, Truman and John Adams, and the more recent miliary history 1776.
NewMexiKen thought this excerpt from an interview McCullough did with NEH Chairman Bruce Cole was interesting:
McCullough: There are certain books that I like very much. Reveille in Washington. I love Barbara Tuchman’s work, particularly The Proud Tower. Paul Horgan’s biography of Archbishop Lamy is a masterpiece. Wallace Stegner’s book on John Wesley Powell I’m fond of.
I like some of the present-day people: Robert Caro’s first volume on Lyndon Johnson was brilliant. I care for some of the best of the Civil War writing: Shelby Foote, for example, and Bruce Catton’s The Stillness at Appomattox. It was Catton’s Stillness at Appomattox that started me reading about the Civil War, and then on to people like Tuchman and others. There is a wonderful book called The Reason Why, about the Charge of the Light Brigade–and biographies–Henri Troyat’s Tolstoy, for example.
I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber. I’m very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down. To hold the reader’s attention, you have to bring the person who’s reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings?
When I did Truman, I had no idea what woods I was venturing into. Had I known it was going to take me ten years, I never would have done it. In retrospect, I’m delighted now that I didn’t know.
I love all sides of the work but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. There have been times when a book was taking year after year—not with this one so much, but with The Path Between the Seas—when I’d come down to Washington to do research in the National Archives, hoping I wouldn’t find anything new because it could set me back another year or two.
By the same token, to open up a box of the death certificates kept by the French at the hospital in Ancon, at Panama City and to read the personal details of those who died—their names, their age, where they came from, height, color of eyes—was a connection with the reality of them, the mortal tale of that undertaking, that one can never find by doing the conventional kind of research with microfilm or Xeroxed copies.
McCullough also says this: “You stand in front of one of those great paintings or you pick up Samuel Johnson’s essays or Francis Parkman’s works on the French and Indian War, and it’s humbling. But it also is affirming in the sense that you realize that you’re working in a great tradition.”
Today we honor two venerable American institutions.
On this date in 1864 Abraham Lincoln signed the land grant preserving Yosemite Valley.
According to the Library of Congress:
The legislation provided California with 39,000 acres of the Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Big Tree Grove “upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation.”
The newly-appointed Yosemite Board of Park Commissioners confronted the dual task of preserving the magnificent landscape while providing for public recreation. With amazing foresight, board member and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted noted these goals could conflict. In his August 9, 1865 Draft of Preliminary Report upon the Yosemite and Big Tree Grove, Olmsted warns “the slight harm which the few hundred visitors of this year might do, if no care were taken to prevent it, would not be slight, if it should be repeated by millions.”
And Lena Horne is 91 today.
Even in her eighties, the legendary Lena Horne has a quality of timelessness about her. Elegant and wise, she personifies both the glamour of Hollywood and the reality of a lifetime spent battling racial and social injustice. Pushed by an ambitious mother into the chorus line of the Cotton Club when she was sixteen, and maneuvered into a film career by the N.A.A.C.P., she was the first African American signed to a long-term studio contract. In her rise beyond Hollywood’s racial stereotypes of maids, butlers, and African natives, she achieved true stardom on the silver screen, and became a catalyst for change even beyond the glittery fringes of studio life.
Elsewhere —
Vincent D’Onofrio is 49.
Deirdre Lovejoy — Rhonda Pearlman of The Wire — is 46.
Mike Tyson is 42.
37 years ago today the 26th amendment was ratified by Ohio, the required 38th state. The amendment lowered the voting age to 18.
Today is the birthday
… of Harmon Killebrew, 72. Not only is Killebrew in the Hall of Fame, but his is the profile on the Major League Baseball logo.
… of best actor Oscar nominee Gary Busey. He’s 64. The nomination was for The Buddy Holly Story.
… of Football Hall of Famer Dan Dierdorf, 59.
… of Maria Conchita Alonso, 51.
Actress Jayne Mansfield, just 34, was killed 41 years ago today when her car struck a trailer truck near Slidell, Louisiana. The driver and Ms. Mansfield’s companion, Sam Brody, were also killed. Three of her children asleep in the backseat survived.
Today is the birthday
… of three-time Oscar nominee for best actress Eleanor Parker. She’s 86.
… of Derek Jeter, 34.
… of Michael Vick, 28.
Author Walter Farley was born on June 26, 1916.
He grew up loving horses and went on to write the novel The Black Stallion (1941). It’s the story of a boy and a wild stallion who survive a shipwreck and become friends on a deserted island. The book was so popular that Farley went on to write twenty novels about the horse, including The Black Stallion Returns (1945), The Black Stallion Revolts (1953), and The Black Stallion’s Ghost (1969).
NewMexiKen’s favorite was always The Island Stallion.
Mildred (Babe) Didrikson Zaharias was born on June 26, 1914. Ms. Zaharias was named the top female athlete of the first half of the 20th century. She excelled in track and field, then took up golf at age 21, often hitting more than 1,000 golf balls a day as she learned the game. Eventually she won every important championship. Babe Zaharias died of cancer at age 42.
Pearl Buck was born on June 26, 1892. Ms. Buck won the Noble Prize for literature in 1938 “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces.” This is an excerpt from The Writer’s Almanac:
On the ship to America she started writing a new novel called East Wind, West Wind, which was published in 1930 and became a small success. The following year, she published The Good Earth (1931), about a Chinese peasant who becomes a wealthy landowner. At the time, Westerners saw China as one of the most exotic places on earth. Pearl Buck was the first writer to portray the ordinary lives of Chinese people for a Western audience. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for literature and became an international best seller.
Al Molinaro of “Happy Days” is 89 today.
Mick Fleetwood is 61. “Rumours” has sold more than 19 million copies, the 10th best-selling album of all time.1
Minka Kelly of “Friday Night Lights” is 28 today. Old for high school wouldn’t you say?
Jack Dempsey was born on this date in 1895 in Manassa, Colorado, which makes him about the most famous native-son of the San Luis Valley.
1
… of Justice Clarence Thomas. He’s 60.
… of American Idol’s Randy Jackson. He’s 52.
… of Oscar-winner Frances McDormand. She’s 51. Miss McDormand has had three Oscar nominations for best supporting actress in addition to her winning best actress performance in Fargo.
… of K.T. Tunstall. Kate is 33.
Her face is a map of the world
Is a map of the world
You can see she’s a beautiful girl
She’s a beautiful girl
And everything around her is a silver pool of light
The people who surround her feel the benefit of it
It makes you calm
She holds you captivated in her palm
Suddenly I see (Suddenly I see)
This is what I wanna be
Suddenly I see (Suddenly I see)
Why the hell it means so much to me
… of LaDainian Tomlinson. He’s 29.
Choreographer Bob Fosse was born on this date in 1927.
According to many sources, Killer Angels author Michael Shaara was born on this date in 1929. According to his biography at son Jeff Shaara’s web site, the father was born in 1928. The Killer Angels, which won the Pulitzer Prize and is regarded by many as the best Civil War novel, “was rejected by the first fifteen publishers who saw the manuscript.”
Alfred Charles Kinsey was born on this date in 1894. And so was Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who, at age 42, gave up his throne for the woman he loved. After just 10 months as king, Edward VIII defied the British establishment to marry Mrs. Bessie Wallis Warfield Simpson, a twice-divorced American. One wonders what Henry VIII would have thought of the fuss. (The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was renamed the House of Windsor in 1917.)
Jane Russell is 87 today. She was 36D when she made The Outlaw for Howard Hughes. He discovered her at his dentist, where she was a receptionist.
Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross, the wife and husband on the TV sitcom Family Ties, are both 61 today. Alex, their son on the show, was played by Michael J. Fox, who was 46 on June 9th.
Novelist Ian McEwan is 60.
Kathy Mattea is 48.
Juliette Lewis is 35 today. She was 18 when she played the daughter in Cape Fear, and received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination.
Prince William is 26.
It doesn’t really matter but existentialist philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre was born on this date in 1905.
Sartre became a teacher. At a time when the European teaching style was lecturing from a distance, he drank with his students at local bars, played cards and ping-pong with them, and joined them for picnics on the beach. In his spare time he began to write a novel called Nausea (1938). The book was his first major success, and it made him famous. People called him the French Kafka. He went on to write Being and Nothingness (1943), about the meaning of freedom. He wrote, “Hell is other people.” And, “If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.”
Today is the birthday
… of Olympia Dukakis. She’s 77. Miss Dukakis won the Oscar for best supporting actress for Moonstruck.
… of Martin Landau. He’s 77. Mr. Landau has been nominated for three best supporting actor Oscars, winning of course for Ed Wood.
… of Danny Aiello. He’s 75. Mr. Aiello was nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for Do The Right Thing.
… of John Mahoney. This retired Seattle cop, the father of two psychiatrists, is 68. You know, Frasier’s dad, Martin Crane.
… of Brian Wilson; he’s 66. Perhaps the greatest American composer of popular music of the past 40+ years, Wilson is an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the self-destructive, yet creative genius behind the Beach Boys.
… of Anne Murray, 63.
… of Bob Vila. He’s 62, so it’s not just “This Old House” that’s old anymore.
… of Lionel Richie, 59.
… of John Goodman. He’s 56. Goodman has been nominated for eight Emmys without a victory. He did win a Golden Globe for playing Roseanne’s husband Dan.
… of Nicole Kidman. She’s 41. Nominated for best actress twice, Miss Kidman won the Oscar for The Hours.
Chet Atkins was born on June 20th in 1924. He died of lung cancer in 2001.
Few guitarists have had more influence on the instrument than Chet Atkins. In Atkins’ case, his influence extends from the country-music realm into rock and roll, as well. As a studio musician, he appeared on records by Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, and countless country musicians. Atkins’ thumb-and-fingerpicking style influenced George Harrison, Duane Eddy, the Ventures, Eddie Cochran, Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler, as well as innumerable country pickers. Even the likes of Ted Nugent has credited Atkins with inspiring him to take up the instrument. ”I think he influenced everybody who picked up a guitar,” said Duane Eddy.
Errol Flynn was born on June 20th in 1909. Flynn was from Tasmania, Australia — his mother was descended from one of the Bounty mutineers. The role that made him a sensation was Captain Blood in 1935. Most of his movie portrayals were of the swashbuckle type. Drugs and alcohol took their toll, and Flynn died at age 50.
Flynn’s yacht registration was among the records NewMexiKen once managed. The purpose for the vessel he wrote on the government form was: “Pleasure! Pleasure! Pleasure!”
Lillian Hellman was born on June 20th in 1905.
Her first big success was The Children’s Hour — which premiered on Broadway in 1934 — about a pompous boarding school child who damaged the reputations of the two school directors by accusing them of being lesbians. The play was banned in many places, including Boston and Chicago. Hellman later adapted the play for film, changing the scandalous relationship into a love triangle, and it came out as These Three in 1936.
She wrote several volumes of memoirs, including An Unfinished Woman (1969), about her New Orleans childhood; Pentimento (1973), which inspired a film; and Scoundrel Time (1976), which included an account of her testimony before the Un-American Activities House Committee.
Hellman said, “People change and forget to tell each other.”
Today is the birthday
… of Gena Rowlands. She’s 78. Miss Rowlands has been nominated for the best actress Oscar twice — A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980).
… of Salman Rushdie. He’s 61.
When Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988, most Western critics didn’t notice that it would be offensive to Muslims. In the book, Rushdie makes a lot of obscure jokes about the Islamic religion, he names the whores in a Mecca brothel after the Prophet Muhammad’s wives, and he suggests that the Koran is not the direct word of God. The book was banned in India the month after publication and then subsequently in other countries. It was also publicly burned. There were bomb threats called in to the publishing house. Translators of the work suffered assassination attempts; the Italian translator was wounded, the Japanese translator killed, and the fire set by Islamic extremists to the Turkish translator’s hotel left 40 people dead.
The above excerpted from The Writer’s Almanac, which has much more.
… of Phylicia Rashad. Clair Hanks Huxtable is 60. (Bill Cosby, Dr. Huxtable, is 11 years older.)
… of Kathleen Turner. She’s 54. Miss Turner was nominated for the best actress Oscar for Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).
… of Paula Abdul. She’s 46. A former Lakers cheerleader, Miss Abdul had six number one records 1988-1991. She topped the charts for 15 weeks altogether.
Lou Gehrig was born on June 19 in 1903.
Lou Gehrig teamed with Babe Ruth to form baseball’s most devastating hitting tandem ever. “The Iron Horse” had 13 consecutive seasons with both 100 runs scored and 100 RBI, averaging 139 runs and 148 RBI; set an American League mark with 184 RBI in 1931; hit a record 23 grand slams; and won the 1934 Triple Crown. His .361 batting average in seven World Series led the Yankees to six titles. A true gentleman and a tragic figure, Gehrig’s consecutive games played streak ended at 2,130 when he was felled by a disease that later carried his own name.
Gehrig died in 1941. As Christopher Moltisanti of The Sopranos puts it, “You ever think what a coincidence it is that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig’s disease?”
Moses Horwitz was born on June 19th 110 years ago. That’s the boss stooge, Moe Howard. “I’ll squeeze the cider out of your Adam’s apple.”
The Statue of Liberty arrived at Bedloe’s Island in New York harbor on June 19, 1885.
The statue is constructed of hand-shaped copper sheets, assembled on a framework of steel supports designed by engineers Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel. For transit to America, the figure was broken down into 350 separate pieces and packed in 214 crates. The Statue of Liberty sits within the star-shaped walls of the former Fort Wood, rising to a height of 305 feet on a pedestal designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt.
Worldwide about 16½ million people have their birthday today, among them …
Lou Brock, who’s 69.
Recognized as one of the most gifted base runners in baseball, Lou Brock helped to revolutionize the art and science of this element of the game as he totaled 938 stolen bases during his 19-year career. A six-time All-Star selection, Brock also accumulated more than 3,000 hits to help lead the St. Louis Cardinals to three National League pennants and two World Series championships. Although his stolen base records have been eclipsed, the National League honors each year’s stolen base leader with the Lou Brock Award.
Paul McCartney. He’s 66.
Between his work with the Beatles and as a solo artist and leader of Wings, McCartney has written or cowritten more than 50 Top Ten singles. With and without Wings, McCartney has been extremely prolific, averaging an album a year since the appearance of McCartney. Moreover, he’s been eclectic as well, not only recording pop and rock but also dabbling in various classical forms and ambient dance music. In the post-Beatles era McCartney has cracked the Top Forty 35 times. When combined with the Beatles’ 49 Top Forty U.S. singles, it is a matter of statistical fact that Paul McCartney is the most successful pop-music composer ever and the second greatest hitmaker, behind Elvis Presley. Without question he is one of the most important musicians of the 20th century.
The first film critic to win the Pulitizer Prize for distinguished criticism, Roger Ebert is 66 today.
Best actress Oscar nominee Carol Kane is 56
So is Isabella Rossellini, the daughter of the two legends, Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman.
Not eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame until next year, Bruce Smith is 45 today. Smith was Virginia Tech’s first great football player.
George Mikan was born on June 18 in 1924. At 6-10 Mikan was the first “big man” in basketball leading the Minneapolis Lakers to five NBA titles in six years. The widening of the lane, the NBA shot clock and the rule against defensive goaltending were brought about by Mikan’s dominance. He was named one of the 50 best ever in the NBA in 1996. George Mikan died in 2005.
That’s Mikan with Abdul-Jabbar and Shaq.
Emmy-award winning actor E.G. Marshall was born on June 18 in 1914. Marshall appeared in more than 100 television programs, most famously for The Defenders.
The famed oil firefighter Red Adair was born on June 18 in 1915. A generation ago Adair’s feats were well-known enough to inspire a John Wayne movie, Hellfighters.
Bud Collyer was born on June 18 in 1908. Collyer was the voice of Superman on the radio 1940-1951, but known better now as one of the first TV game show hosts, in particular for Beat the Clock.
Barry Manilow is 65. He was born Barry Alan Pincus, but raised by his mother and grandparents named Manilow. Some sources say he is 62.
Thomas Haden Church is 47. Church was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for Sideways.
Greg Kinnear is 45. Kinnear was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for As Good As It Gets. Kinnear is a graduate of The University of Arizona (1985).
Venus Williams is 28.
M.C. Escher was born on June 17th in 1898.
Ralph Bellamy was born on June 17th in 1904. Bellamy was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for The Awful Truth in 1937. He received an Honorary Oscar in 1987. Bellamy starred in an early TV series, Man Against Crime.
John Hersey was born on June 17th in 1914. Hersey won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1945 for A Bell for Adano but is perhaps better known for Hiroshima.
After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, he was one of the first Western reporters to arrive and document the aftermath. In his reporting, he deciding to write about how individual persons were affected, and he focused his stories on the lives of six people in Hiroshima at the time of the explosion: a minister, a seamstress who had been widowed, two doctors, a minister, a Catholic priest, and a young factory worker.
The editor of The New Yorker decided to devote the last issue in August of 1946 to Hersey’s articles. Later, the collected articles appeared in book form, Hiroshima, published in 1946.
Several sources give June 16, 1829, as Geronimo’s date of birth. It’s not clear to NewMexiKen that the Apaches were using the Gregorian calendar at that time. And, indeed, one of those sources, The New York Times, stated in its obituary of Geronimo in February 1909 that he was nearly 90 — not 79 as this birth date would indicate. But, he had to be born some time. So why not June 16?
In her excellent 1976 biography of Geronimo, Angie Debo concludes:
Geronimo was born in the early 1820’s near the upper Gila in the mountains crossed by the present state boundary [Arizona-New Mexico], probably on the Arizona side near the present Clifton. …
He was given the name Goyahkla, with the generally accepted meaning “One Who Yawns,’ why or under what circumstances is not known.
As an adult in battle he was called Geronimo by Mexican soldiers, perhaps because they could not pronounce Goyahkla, or perhaps to invoke Saint Jerome (Geronimo is Spanish for Jerome). The name was adopted for him by his own people.
Novelist Joyce Carol Oates is 70 today.
She published her first story, “In the Old World,” in Mademoiselle magazine (1959) just before her senior year of college, and she published her first book of short stories, By the North Gate, a few years later, in 1963. She has gone on to become one of the most prolific writers of her generation, writing more than 70 books in 40 years, including novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and essays. She writes almost everything in long hand before typing, and she usually cuts out a few hundred pages from every novel before it is published.
Lamont Dozier is 67. Who is Lamont Dozier you say? Along with Eddie and Brian Holland, Dozier wrote a few songs you may know, among them:
Baby I Need Your Loving
Baby Love
Bernadette
Come See About Me
Nowhere To Run
I Hear a Symphony
My World Is Empty Without You
Reach Out, I’ll Be There
How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You
(Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) I Can’t Help Myself
Stop! In The Name Of Love
This Old Heart Of Mine
It’s The Same Old Song
Jimmy Mack
Roberto “No Mas” Duran is 57. In a 1980 fight with Sugar Ray Leonard, with 16 seconds remaining in the 8th round, Duran had enough. He told the referee, “No mas, no mas.”
Phil Mickelson —Lefty — is 38 today. He’s watching the playoff on TV with the rest of us.
Happy birthday to you too Uncle Rich.
Bob McGrath — that’s Bob from Sesame Street — is 76.
Siegfried Fischbacher is 69.. That’s Siegfried of Siegfried and Roy.
John-Boy Walton is 57. That’s actor Richard Thomas.
The voice of Buzz Lightyear is 55. That’s Tim Allen.
Alexandra Elizabeth Sheedy is 46.
And the Olsen twins are 44.
President George H.W. Bush is 84 today.
Well, gawwwleee and shazzayam, Jim Nabors is 78.
Marv Philip Aufrichtig was born 67 years ago today. We know him as Marv Albert.
Armando Anthony Corea is also 67. We know him as Chick.
Anne Frank should have been 79 years old today. The Writer’s Almanac has a brief essay about Frank. Beginning with: “It was on this day in 1942 that she received a red and white plaid journal, from her father, for her 13th birthday, and she started to write her diary, a diary that she called by the name of ‘Kitty.’”
Fourteen years ago today someone killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
Two-time Oscar nominee Gene Wilder is 75 today. Wilder was nominated for supporting actor for The Producers and as a co-writer with Mel Brooks for Young Frankenstein.
Chad Everett is 71.
Adrienne Barbeau is 63. And now it’s her age, too.
Frank Beard is 59 today. That’s him with Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Frank Beard is the one without a beard.
Joe Montana is 52.
Shia LaBeouf is 22.
William Styron was born on June 11th in 1925. This from American Masters:
After leaving the service, [Styron] moved to New York, where he supported his fledgling writing career working at McGraw-Hill Publishing. He also began taking classes with Hiram Haydn at the New School for Social Research. With guidance and encouragement from Haydn, Styron made his stunning debut at the age of twenty-six with LIE DOWN IN DARKNESS (1951). This novel launched his career and earned him the American Academy’s Prix de Rome. Told under the shadow of the Hiroshima bombing, LIE DOWN IN DARKNESS charts the tragic descent into suicide of a young woman raised in a troubled Virginia family.
He followed LIE DOWN IN DARKNESS with THE LONG MARCH (1957), SET THIS HOUSE ON FIRE (1960), and one of his most famous novels, THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER (1967). Published at the height of the civil rights movement, THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER is told from the point of view of the historical figure who led a disastrous and bloody slave insurrection which set the stage for the Civil War. Winning a Pulitzer Prize, THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER was both praised as a brave look into a rarely represented life, and maligned for what many saw as a clichéd conception of a black man.
Styron’s next novel did not appear for more than ten years. The tragedy of SOPHIE’S CHOICE (1979) is played out between a young Virginia writer and a Polish Holocaust survivor in an urban Jewish enclave of Brooklyn. It takes place during the aftermath of World War II, an era Styron describes as “a nightmarish Sargasso Sea of guilt and apprehensions.” In SOPHIE’S CHOICE, Styron weaves a fictional tale, profound in its engagement, with major recent historical events. Made into a popular movie starring Meryl Streep, SOPHIE’S CHOICE returned Styron to the popular eye as both a controversial personality and a major writer.
Styron’s compelling Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (1990) describes his crippling, nearly suicidal depression at age 60. Styron died in November 2006.
Vince Lombardi was born on June 11 in 1913. Lombardi is the legendary football coach. You know — the one the Super Bowl trophy is named for.
Some Lombardisms:
Vince Lombardi died in 1970 at age 57.
Jeanette Rankin…was born on this date in 1880 on a ranch near Missoula, Montana. In 1916, Rankin was elected the first woman member of the U.S. House of Representatives. She was not re-elected in 1918, after voting against entry in the First World War, but was returned to Congress for one term in 1940. In 1941, she cast the sole vote in Congress against the U.S. declaration of war on Japan. Jeanette Rankin was a social worker and a lobbyist for peace and women’s rights. She died just before her 93rd birthday in 1973. She is one of the two Montanans honored in The National Statuary Hall Collection of the U.S. Capitol. Read Rankin’s obituary from The New York Times.
And NewMexiKen’s very own sister Martha is celebrating her birthday today, too.
Oh, and today is a state holiday in Hawai’i. It’s Kamehameha Day. “On June 11th, 2008, thousands of people will gather on the northern tip of the Big Island of Hawai‘i to honor King Kamehameha I, the chief who united the Hawaiian Islands in 1795.”
Prince Philip is 87 today.
Maurice Sendak is 80. He illustrated and wrote Where the Wild Things Are in 1963.
Football hall-of-famer Dan Fouts is 57.
John Edwards is 55.
Gina Gershon is 46.
Jeanne Tripplehorn is 45. Her father played with Gary Lewis and the Playboys.
Elizabeth Hurley is 43.
Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana, is 37 today. If he runs with McCain, their average age election day would be nearly 55.
Frances Ethel Gumm was born 86 years ago today. We know her as Judy Garland. She was just under 5-feet tall and the need for weight-control lead her to drugs, which controlled much of her adult life. She died of a barbiturate overdose at age 47. Ms. Garland was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role for A Star is Born (1955) and Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Judgment at Nuremberg (1962). She won a special “Juvenile Oscar” for The Wizard of Oz (1940).
The author Saul Bellow was born on June 10th in 1915 in Quebec. He grew up in Chicago. The Writer’s Almanac had a brief bio last year that included this:
His father wasn’t happy that Bellow wanted to be a writer. He said, “You write and then you erase. You call that a profession?” His brothers went into more conventional careers and Bellow once said, “All I started out to do was to show up my brothers.”
Hattie McDaniel was born on June 10th in 1895. She won a supporting actress Oscar for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone with the Wind, the first African-American to be nominated. Ms. McDaniel has nearly 100 credits listed at IMDB.
Donald Duck, Cole Porter and Les Paul!
Lester William Polfus is 93 today. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as Les Paul.
The name Les Paul is synonymous with the electric guitar. As a player, inventor and recording artist, Paul has been an innovator from the early years of his life. Born Lester William Polfus in 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Paul built his first crystal radio at age nine – which was about the time he first picked up a guitar. By age 13 he was performing semi-professionally as a country-music guitarist and working diligently on sound-related inventions. In 1941, Paul built his first solid-body electric guitar, and he continued to make refinements to his prototype throughout the decade. He also worked on refining the technology of sound, developing revolutionary engineering techniques such as close miking, echo delay and multitracking. All the while he busied himself as a bandleader who could play both jazz and country music.
…In 1952, Les Paul introduced the first eight-track tape recorder (designed by Paul and marketed by Ampex) and, more significantly for the future of rock and roll, launched the solid-body electric guitar that bears his name. Built and marketed by Gibson, with continuous advances and refinements from Paul in such areas as low-impedance pickup technology, the Les Paul guitar became a staple instrument among discerning rock guitarists.
Robert S. McNamara is 92.
Dick Vitale is 69 today, baby! Not exactly a diaper dandy.
Michael J. Fox is 47.
Two-time nominee for the Best Actor Oscar, Johnny Depp is 45.
Tedy Bruschi is 35.
Natalie Portman is 27.
Cole Porter was born in Peru, Indiana, on June 9th in 1891.
Mr. Porter wrote the lyrics and music for his songs, and to both he brought such an individuality of style that a genre known as “the Cole Porter song” became recognized.
The hallmarks of a typical Porter song were lyrics that were urbane or witty and a melody with a sinuous, brooding quality. Some of his best-known songs in this vein were “What Is This Thing Called Love,” “Night and Day,” “Love for Sale” and “Begin the Beguine.”
But an equally typical and equally recognizable Porter song would have a simple, bouncy melody and a lyric based on a long and entertaining list of similarities, opposite or contrasts. “Let’s Do It” ticked off the amiable amatory habits of birds, flowers, crustacea, fish, insects, animals and various types of humans, while “You’re the Top” was an exercise in the creation of superlatives that included such items as “the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire,” “Garbo’s salary” and “Mickey Mouse.”
Still a third type of Porter song was exclamatory in both lyrics and melody. “Just One of Those Things,” “From This Moment On” and “It’s All Right With Me” were instances.
Night and Day was one of the NPR 100, their list of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. The first note is repeated 35 times.
Donald Duck is 74 today. He debuted in the Disney Silly Symphony cartoon “The Wise Little Hen” on this date in 1934. (Donald Duck is one of three Disney characters with an “official” birthday. The others are Mickey and Minnie, who debuted on November 18, 1928.)
Donald Duck actually appeared in more theatrical cartoons than Mickey Mouse — 128. Donald’s middle name is Fauntleroy.
Levi Stubbs is 72. Stubbs was and is the lead vocalist of The Four Tops. It’s Stubbs who sings:
Now if you feel that you can’t go on
Because all of your hope is gone
And your life is filled with much confusion
Until happiness is just an illusion
And your world around is tumbling down
Darling reach out
C’mon girl
Reach on out for me
Reach out for me
Tennis Hall of Famer Bjorn Borg is 52.
Oscar nominee Paul Giamatti is 41. He was nominated for his supporting role in Cinderella Man. Giamatti’s father was professor of Renaissance literature at Yale, president of Yale, and Commissioner of Baseball.
Nathan Hale was born on June 6th in 1755. “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” he said when hanged by the British in 1776 as an American spy. Hale had volunteered to report on British positions in New York. He was caught when Karl Rove’s ancestor revealed Hale’s covert identity to Robert Novak.
Bill Moyers is 74 today.
Author Ken Follett is 59.
Suze Orman is 57.
Kenneth Gorelick is 52. You know, Kenny G.
Peter Gibbons is 41, and no longer turning out TPS reports and going to Chotchkie’s. That’s actor Ron Livingston.
Supporting Oscar nominee Mark Wahlberg is 37.
Richard Scarry was born on June 5, 1919. Scarry has written more than 300 books for children and, according to The Writer’s Almanac, “said that what made him happiest as an author was receiving letters from people telling him that their copies of his books were all worn out, or were held together with Scotch tape.” Scarry died in 1994.
Doroteo Arango was born on June 5, 1878. We know him as Pancho Villa.
Adam Smith was baptized on June 5, 1723. His An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was published in 1776.
Another immortal economist, John Maynard Keynes was born on June 5, 1883.
He’s best known for his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published during the Great Depression in 1935. He argued that governments can correct severe depressions by spending lots of money, even if it means running a deficit, to put people back to work. Keynes’s ideas greatly influenced Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal polices, and his ideas have been used to justify budget deficits ever since.
William Boyd, better known as Hopalong Cassidy, was born on this date in 1895. After success as a leading man in silent film, Boyd’s career was going nowhere in 1935 when he was cast to play the cowboy, Hopalong Cassidy. He made 54 films in the role for producer Harry Sherman, then 12 more on his own. In 1948, in one of the great prescient moves ever made in Hollywood, Boyd bought the rights to all the films, selling his ranch to raise the money. Television needed Saturday morning fare and Boyd had it.
One medium fed on the other, and by 1950 [William] Boyd was at the center of a national phenomenon. For two years he was as big a media hero as the nation had seen. In personal appearances he was mobbed: 85,000 people came through a Brooklyn department store during his appearance there. His endorsement for any product meant instant sales in the millions. It meant overnight shortages, frantic shopping sprees, and millions of dollars for Boyd. There were Hopalong Cassidy bicycles, rollerskates (complete with spurs), Hoppy pajamas, Hopalong beds. The demand for Hoppy shirts and pants was so great that a shortage of black dye resulted. His investment in Hopalong Cassidy paid off to an estimated $70 million.
Why a man of 52 years appealed to so many children remains a mystery. Possibly some of it had to do with the novelty of television: just as Amos ‘n’ Andy had capitalized on the newness of radio a generation earlier, a TV sensation was bound to occur. And the hero had a no-nonsense demeanor: he was steely-eyed and quick on the draw, and he meted out justice without the endless warbling and sugar-coated romance that came with the others. As for Boyd, he became Cassidy in a real sense. His personal habits changed; he gave up drinking and carousing and lived with his fifth wife until his death in 1972.
John Dunning, On the Air
Hopalong Cassidy was NewMexiKen’s first hero. None has been as good since.
Angelina Jolie is 33 today.
Michelle Phillips, one of the mamas of The Mamas and the Papas, is 64.
Noah Wyle, Dr. Carter, is 37.
Robert Fulghum is 71.
When he was a Unitarian minister in Washington state in the 1960s, Fulghum began jotting down personal insights to use in sermons and his weekly church newsletter. He worked them up into a statement of personal belief: “Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess…” — which eventually found its way to a Connecticut literary agent when her daughter came home with it tucked in her school bookbag, photocopied by her teacher. The agent asked Fulghum to write more, and the book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, and its follow-up, It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It (1989), ran for a time in first and second positions on bestseller lists.
Larry McMurtry is 72 today. Three years ago, The Writer’s Almanac had a good essay about McMurtry, in NewMexiKen’s opinion the best to write both fiction and nonfiction about the American west since his mentor Wallace Stegner. Two years ago NewMexiKen and Dad visited McMurtry’s hometown of Archer City, Texas. Here’s my report.
Tony Curtis is 83. Curtis received a leading actor Oscar nomination for The Defiant Ones.
Anderson Cooper is 41.
Allen Ginsberg was born on this date in 1926.
His father was a schoolteacher and occasional poet. His mother was a Russian immigrant and devoted Marxist. She was in and out of psychiatric institutions all through out his childhood and had to undergo electric shock treatments and a lobotomy. Ginsberg went to Columbia University on a small scholarship and there he began consorting with Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, William Burroughs. After college, he got a job in marketing research, wore a business suit everyday, and had on office on the 52nd floor of the Empire State Building. He says he started writing there, and that there he learned about careful manipulation of words.
He moved to San Francisco and became friends with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who published Ginsburg’s [sic] first major work, Howl.
By his 30s, he was prematurely bald with a ring of hair on the fringe of his head and thick long black beard streaked with gray. He wore black rimmed classes and his Buddha belly was one of his most distinguishing features.
Ginsburg’s [sic] reading of Howl was reputed to have “turned the 1950s into the 1960s overnight.” It began:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.
Ginsberg died in 1997.
Dr. Zaius was born on June 3rd in 1901. That’s Maurice Evans, famed stage actor, two-time Tony winner, who is perhaps most remembered for playing the Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith in Planet of the Apes.
Jefferson Davis was born on June 3rd in 1808.
Jerry West is 70 today.
Jerry West was on the fast track to stardom from the day he touched a basketball. Throughout the NBA’s history, it would be hard to find a better pure shooter. At West Virginia University, West led the Mountaineers to the NCAA Finals and captured the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award in 1959. In a superlative senior season, West was a consensus All-America and led West Virginia to its third consecutive conference championship. In Los Angeles, West played virtually his entire career with Hall of Famer Elgin Baylor, and five years with Wilt Chamberlain. When the game was on the line, West’s Los Angeles Laker teammates always found a way to get the ball to “Mr. Clutch.” His cool, calm, and collected personality and his leadership on the court was a coach’s dream. When he retired, West’s name was on nearly every page of the record books. He scored 25,192 points (third), averaged 27.0 ppg (fourth), made 7,160 free throws (second), dished out 6,238 assists (fifth). West was equally adept on the defensive end, named to the NBA All-Defensive First-Team four times.
Official Website of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame
Rudolph Giuliani is 64 today. This alone disqualifies May 28th from any consideration as a holiday.
Gladys Knight is 64. The Pips are various ages.
Gladys Knight and the Pips – brother Merald “Bubba” Knight and cousins Edward Patten and William Guest – are one of the most respected and longest-lived soul groups, with hits spanning four decades. Knight was born in Atlanta, Georgia, where she began singing at age four with her brother and cousins at Baptist church functions. The group first recorded for the Brunswick label in 1958 and dented the charts with “Every Beat of My Heart” (1961) and “Letter Full of Tears” (1962), both on Fury Records. After a few more singles and personnel changes, which cemented Gladys Knight and the Pips in their most enduring and best-known lineup, the group signed with Motown’s Soul label in 1966. Motown founder Berry Gordy, who saw them perform at Harlem’s Apollo Theater in 1966, made note of Knight’s “class, artistry and stage presence….She could talk to an audience and articulate what she wanted to say with just the right words.”
At Motown, Gladys Knight and the Pips quickly rose to prominence with their version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (#1 R&B, #2 pop), which boasted more of an uptempo, gospel-style arrangement than Gaye’s own recording of it.
John Fogerty is 63 today. Fogerty was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 with Creedence Clearwater Revival.
John Fogerty now firmly at the helm as guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer, Creedence took off with their neo-psychedelic reworking of Dale Hawkins’ rockabilly classic “Suzie Q.” From then on, the hits kept coming as the band churned out six albums of powerful, roots-oriented rock and roll between 1968 and 1970: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bayou Country, Green River, Willie and the Poorboys, Cosmo’s Factory and Pendulum. Ten of Creedence’s singles cracked the Top Ten during the period 1968-71. Although the group was not overtly political, several of their songs – particularly “Fortunate Son” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain” – eloquently expressed the counterculture’s resistance to the Vietnam War and sympathy for those who were fighting in what now stand as anthems of those troubled times.
Oh, put me in, coach – I’m ready to play today;
Put me in, coach – I’m ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be centerfield.
Sondra Locke is 61 today. Though never married, she and Clint Eastwood were a couple from 1975-1990.
The Dionne Quintuplets were born in Corbeil, Ontario, Canada, 74 years ago today.
Annette Lillianne Marie Dionne
Cécile Marie Emilda Dionne
Emilie Marie Jeanne Dionne (died 1954)
Marie Reina Alma Dionne (died 1970)
Yvonne Edouilda Marie Dionne (died 2001)
Together, the five girls, at least two months premature, weighed about 14 pounds. They were put by an open stove to keep warm, and mothers from surrounding villages brought breast milk for them. Against all expectations, they survived their first weeks. Watch video.
According to the CBC Archives:
When the quints are still babies, the Ontario government takes the sisters from their parents, apparently to protect their fragile health, and makes the girls wards of the state. For the first nine years of their lives, they live at a hospital in their hometown that becomes a tourist mecca called “Quintland.” The Ministry of Public Welfare sets up a trust fund in their behalf with assurances that the financial well-being of the entire Dionne family would be taken care of “for all their normal needs for the rest of their lives.”
Between 1934 and 1943, about 3 million people visit Quintland. The government and nearby businesses make an estimated half-billion dollars off the tourists, much of which the Dionne family never sees. The sisters are the nation’s biggest tourist attraction — bigger than Niagara Falls.
After nine years and a bitter custody fight, the girls rejoined their family.
There is still a mystery surrounding what happened to the money the Ontario government placed in a trust fund for the quints, though it’s believed that most of the funds went to pay for the many employees of “Quintland.”
In 1998 the surviving quints were awarded $4 million by Ontario.
NewMexiKen has a vague memory of seeing the Dionne quints on display (so to speak) at the Michigan State Fair when I was a little kid. Perhaps only four were there, depending on when it was.
And the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th century was born near Prague, Oklahoma, on this date in 1888. His Sac and Fox given name was Wa-Tho-Huk (Bright Path). We know him as Jim Thorpe.
Thorpe was named by ESPN as the 7th greatest athlete of the 20th century (after Jordan, Ruth, Ali, Brown, Gretsky and Owens). Read the biographical essay, Thorpe preceded Deion, Bo. A couple of items from the biography:
“But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”
Rachel Carson, born on May 27, 1907
Hubert Humphrey was born in Wallace, South Dakota, on this date in 1911. Humphrey was first elected mayor of Minneapolis in 1945 and U.S. Senator in 1948. Senator Humphrey introduced his first bill in 1949; it became law in 1965 and we know it as Medicare.
Humphrey became Vice President with the election of President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. After Johnson withdrew from the 1968 campaign, and after Robert Kennedy was killed, Humphrey was nominated as the Democratic candidate for President. He lost to Richard Nixon in one of the closest elections in history. Some commented that with the vote trending as it did, had the election been one or two days later Humphrey would have won.
But then we wouldn’t have had Watergate and Nixon to kick around.
Best-selling mystery author Tony Hillerman was born on this date in 1925. The Shape Shifter is the 18th book in the series centered on Navajo Tribal policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Hillerman had an interesting website with excerpts from all the books, but it has disappeared. There he told us that:
Leaphorn emerged from a young Hutchinson County, Texas, sheriff who I met and came to admire in 1948 when I was a very green ‘crime and violence” reporter for a paper in the high plains of the Panhandle. He was smart, he was honest, he was wise and humane in his use of police powers–my idealistic young idea of what every cop should be but sometimes isn’t.
. . .Jim Chee emerged several books later. I like to claim he was born from an artistic need for a younger, less sophisticated fellow to make the plot of PEOPLE OF DARKNESS make sense–and that is mostly true. Chee is a mixture of a couple of hundred of those idealistic, romantic, reckless youngsters I had been lecturing to at the University of New Mexico, with their yearnings for Miniver Cheever’s “Days of Old” modified into his wish to keep the Navajo Value System healthy in universe of consumerism.
Mystery writer Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born on this date in 1894. Hammett departed from the intellectualized mysteries of earlier detective novels (Sherlock Holmes for example) and transformed the genre with his less-than-glamorous realism. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.
Hammett actually was a detective with Pinkerton for a few years just before World War I. Contracting TB during military service, he realized his health would keep him from resuming as a detective. He turned to writing. He published his first story in 1922, and then about 80 more, many in the popular pulp crime magazine Black Mask. Hammett’s first novel was Red Harvest, published in 1929. His most famous character, Sam Spade, made his appearance in Hammett’s third novel, The Maltese Falcon (1930). (It was the third—and only successful—attempt to turn that novel into a film when Humphrey Bogart played the role in 1941.) The Thin Man (1934) was the last of Hammett’s novels.
By the early-thirties, Hammett was established and famous. He began a relationship with playwright Lillian Hellman that lasted for 30 years despite his drinking and womanizing. Though both eventually divorced their spouses, they never married. Hammett served in the Army in World War II, enlisting as a private at age 48. His involvement in left-wing politics and unwillingness to testify about it before Congress however, and the continued drinking, diminished his stature. Hammett died in 1961.
John Cheever was born on this date in 1912.
He wrote for more than 50 years and published more than 200 short stories. He’s known for writing about the world of American suburbia. Even though he was one of the most popular short-story writers of the 20th century, he once said that he only earned “enough money to feed the family and buy a new suit every other year.”
In 1935 he was published in The New Yorker for the first time, and he would continue to write for the magazine for the rest of his life. His stories were collected in books including The Way Some People Live (1943) and The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953). The Stories of John Cheever, published in 1978, won the Pulitzer Prize and became one of the few collections of short stories ever to make the New York Times best-seller list.
Cheever died in 1982.
James Arness — Marshall Dillon — is 85.
Brent Musburger is 69. ABC must have some sort of mandatory retirement age.
Levon Helm of The Band is 68.
The Band, more than any other group, put rock and roll back in touch with its roots. With their ageless songs and solid grasp of musical idioms, the Band reached across the decades, making connections for a generation that was, as an era of violent cultural schisms wound down, in desperate search of them. They projected a sense of community in the turbulent late Sixties and early Seventies – a time when the fabric of community in the United States was fraying. Guitarist Robbie Robertson drew from history in his evocative, cinematic story-songs, and the vocal triumvirate of bassist Rick Danko, drummer Levon Helm and keyboardist Richard Manuel joined in rustic harmony and traded lines in rich, conversational exchanges. Multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson provided musical coloration in period styles that evoked everything from rural carnivals of the early 20th century to rock and roll revues of the Fifties.
Stevie Nicks is 60 today. A moment of silence please.
Finally, the platinum edition of Fleetwood Mac came together in 1975 with the recruitment of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. The San Francisco duo had previously cut an album together as Buckingham-Nicks. Drummer Fleetwood heard a tape of theirs at a studio he was auditioning, and the pair were drafted into the group without so much as a formal audition. This lineup proved far and away to be Fleetwood Mac’s most durable and successful. In addition to the most solid rhythm section in rock, this classic lineup contained strong vocalists and songwriters in Buckingham, Nicks and Christine McVie. Male and female points of view were offered with unusual candor on the watershed albums Fleetwood Mac (1975) and Rumours (1977).
Sally K. Ride is 57. Ride Sally Ride.
Lenny Kravitz is 44.
Shakespeare is 38. That’s actor Joseph Fiennes.
Bob Dylan’s influence on popular music is incalculable. As a songwriter, he pioneered several different schools of pop songwriting, from confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-conscious narratives. As a vocalist, he broke down the notions that in order to perform, a singer had to have a conventionally good voice, thereby redefining the role of vocalist in popular music. As a musician, he sparked several genres of pop music, including electrified folk-rock and country-rock. And that just touches on the tip of his achievements. Dylan’s force was evident during his height of popularity in the ’60s — the Beatles’ shift toward introspective songwriting in the mid-’60s never would have happened without him — but his influence echoed throughout several subsequent generations. Many of his songs became popular standards, and his best albums were undisputed classics of the rock & roll canon. Dylan’s influence throughout folk music was equally powerful, and he marks a pivotal turning point in its 20th century evolution, signifying when the genre moved away from traditional songs and toward personal songwriting. Even when his sales declined in the ’80s and ’90s, Dylan’s presence was calculable.
The beginning of Stephen Thomas Erlewine’s profile at allmusic.
Robert Allen Zimmerman was born in Duluth, Minnesota, on May 24th 67 years ago. That’s Bob Dylan, of course.
From the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
Bob Dylan is the pre-eminent poet/lyricist and songwriter of his time. He re-energized the folk-music genre, brought a new lyrical depth to rock and roll when he went electric, and bridged the worlds of rock and country by recording in Nashville. As much as he’s played the role of renegade throughout his career, Dylan has also kept the rock and roll community mindful of its roots by returning often to them. With his songs, Dylan has provided a running commentary on a restless age. His biting, imagistic and often cryptic lyrics served to capture and define the mood of a generation. For this, he’s been elevated to the role of spokesmen – and yet the elusive and reclusive Dylan won’t even admit to being a poet. “I don’t call myself a poet because I don’t like the word,” he has said.
Here’s a video of Tangled Up In Blue.
Tommy Chong, he’s Chong of Cheech and Chong, is 70.
Walter “Radar” O’Reilly, that is Gary Burghoff, is 68.
Patti LaBelle is 64 today.
Priscilla Presley is 63.
Alfred Molina is 55.
Rosanne Cash is 53. She was born a month before her father released his first record, “Cry, Cry, Cry.”
Kristin Scott Thomas is 48.
Michael Chabon is 45 today.
After Wonder Boys, Chabon stumbled on a box of comic books he’d kept since childhood. He hadn’t looked at them in 15 years. He said, “When I opened it up and that smell came pouring out, that old paper smell, I was struck by a rush of memories, a sense of my childhood self that seemed to be contained in there.” It gave him the idea to write a novel about the golden days of the comic book trade called The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It came out in 2000, and won a Pulitzer Prize. It was the story of a Jewish kid who flees the Nazis just before World War II — has to leave his family behind and come to America. Along with his cousin, he creates a comic book super hero called “The Escapist.”
John C. Reilly is 43. “Shake ‘n Bake.”
Victoria was born on May 24, 1819. She was the daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III. None of her uncles had legitimate children who survived, so when her uncle William IV died in 1837, she became queen at age 18. Her reign lasted until 1901; the longest of any British monarch. She had nine children and is Elizabeth II’s great great grandmother.
Victoria Day has been celebrated in Canada since 1845. The holiday is now the Monday before May 24th, unless Monday is May 24th.
The first passenger railroad in the U.S. began service between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland, on May 24th in 1830. That’s 13 miles.
The first telegraph message was transmitted by Samuel F. B. Morse on May 24th in 1844. Sent from Washington to Baltimore it said, “What hath God wrought!”
The Brooklyn Bridge opened on May 24th in 1883. Click here for every fact you ever needed to know about this landmark.
The first Major League Baseball night game was played in Cincinnati on May 24, 1935. The Reds beat the Phillies 2-1. The Reds played seven night games that year (one against each National League opponent).
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