… of Milton S. Hershey, born on this date in 1857. Hershey, who only completed the fourth grade, developed a formula for milk chocolate that made what had been a luxury product into the first nationally marketed candy.
… of Bill Monroe, born on this date in 1911. The Father of Bluegrass Music was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970. In 1993, Monroe was a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, an honor that placed him in the company of Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles and Paul McCartney,
… of Mel Torme, born on this date in 1925. The “Velvet Fog” was a wonderful jazz singer, but his greatest legacy is “The Christmas Song” — “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”.
… of Sherwood Anderson, born on this date in 1876 in Camden, Ohio.
[Anderson] is best known for his short stories, “brooding Midwest tales” which reveal “their author’s sympathetic insight into the thwarted lives of ordinary people.” Between World War I and World War II, Anderson helped to break down formulaic approaches to writing, influencing a subsequent generation of writers, most notably Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Anderson, who lived in New Orleans for a brief time, befriended Faulkner there in 1924 and encouraged him to write about his home county in Mississippi.
— From the Library of Congress, which has more on Anderson.