Football hall-of-fame inductee George Blanda is 80 today. I’m surprised he doesn’t suit up. Blanda played his last game on January 4, 1976, the 1975 AFC Championship. He was 48.
Supreme Court Justice David Souter is 68.
Coach Phil Jackson is 62.
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is 56. That’s Cassandra Peterson. It’s Elvira’s voice that tells me “You have mail.”
Rita Rudner is 51. Some Rudner-isms:
- “Before I met my husband, I’d never fallen in love. I’d stepped in it a few times.”
- “I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn’t mine.”
- “I know I want to have children while my parents are still young enough to take care of them.”
- “I love to shop after a bad relationship. I don’t know. I buy a new outfit and it makes me feel better. It just does. Sometimes I see a really great outfit, I’ll break up with someone on purpose.”
- “We’ve begun to long for the pitter-patter of little feet — so we bought a dog. Well, it’s cheaper, and you get more feet.”
Ken Kesey was born on September 17, 1935. The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media has a great little essay that you should just go read. It begins:
Ken Kesey … was born on this day in La Junta, Colorado (1935). He was a champion wrestler in high school and voted most likely to succeed. He married his high school sweetheart and almost went to Hollywood to be an actor and then accepted a fellowship in creative writing at Stanford, where, as part of a VA experiment, for $75 a day, which was good money, he became one of the first Americans to be exposed to a new drug called LSD.
The 15th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Warren Burger, was born 100 years ago today.
David Dunbar Buick was born on September 17th in 1854. Didn’t know Buick was someone’s name did you?
September 17 is also the anniversary of the Battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg, the bloodiest day in American history. This year is the 145th anniversary.