November 30th is the birthday

… of Efrem Zimbalist Jr. Inspector Lewis Erskine and Stuart Bailey is 88.

… of Dick Clark. America’s oldest teenager is 77.

… of movie director Ridley Scott. He’s 69. Three nominations for the best director Oscar. Can you name the films?

… of David Mamet. The playwright is 59. Two Oscar nomintations for writing, Wag the Dog and The Verdict.

… of Mandy Patinkin. Inigo Montoya is 54.

… of Ben Stiller. He’s 41.

… of Sandra Oh. The actress (Sideways, Arli$$, Grey’s Anatomy) is 36.

Oliver Winchester was born on this date in 1810. A clothing manufacturer, Winchester bought a small failing division of Smith & Wesson in 1850, the division that made a rudimentary repeating rifle. In 1860, an engineer working for Winchester, Benjamin Tyler Henry, developed the first successful repeating rifle. It was improved upon and became known as the Winchester in 1866.

It was on this date in 1835 that Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born.

He’s best known to us today for his novels about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but in his own lifetime his best-selling books were his travel books such as Roughing It (1872), A Tramp Abroad (1880), and Life on the Mississippi (1883).

The Writer’s Almanac has much more.

And Winston Churchill was born on this date in 1874.

Churchillian quotes:

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”

“He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”

“Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”