… of June Lockhart. The mom on Lassie (104 episodes) and Lost in Space is 82.
… of Willis Reed. The basketball hall-of-famer is 65.
… of Carly Simon. She’s 62. NewMexiKen was just reminded the other day that Simon and James Taylor have two children, Sarah and Ben. Ben is a singer, sounding much (much!) like his dad. IMDb says Simon’s “You’re So Vain” is about Warren Beatty.
… of Jimmie Walker. He’s 60. Dyno-mite!
… of Ricky Gervais, 46.
… of George Michael, the singer not the deejay turned sportscaster. He’s 44.
Eric Arthur Blair was born on June 25th in 1903.
The experience persuaded him that it wasn’t Fascism or Communism that was evil, but simply idealism taken to any extreme. And as World War II broke out, he began to worry that idealism was about to conquer Europe and stamp out any kind of freedom. He was so pessimistic about the future of the world that he found it impossible to write fiction. He took a job with the BBC, and got a chance to witness how governments on all sides of the war were using propaganda to rewrite the history what was happening. So in 1943, Orwell resigned his position at the BBC. He had wanted for years to write a book about his idea that utopias so easily turn into nightmares, so he finally did.
The book was only about 100 pages long, and most of the main characters were talking animals. When he submitted it to publishers in London, they all turned him down. Orwell considered publishing the book himself as a pamphlet, but finally a small publisher picked it up, and when Animal Farm came out in 1945, the book made Orwell famous.