November 20th

Today is the birthday

… of U.S. Senator Robert Byrd. The West Virginian is 90.

… of Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, “who through her magnificent epic writing has — in the words of Alfred Nobel — been of very great benefit to humanity.” She’s 84. The Writer’s Almanac has brief essays on Gordimer and Don DeLillo. He’s 71 today.

…of best supporting actress Oscar-winner Estelle Parsons. She won the award for “Bonnie and Clyde” and was nominated again the following year for “Rachel, Rachel.” She’s 80.

… of actor and “Family Feud” host Richard Dawson. He’s 75.

… of comedian Dick Smothers. The straight man of the duo is 69.

… of U.S. Senator Joe Biden of Delaware. He’s 65.

… of Veronica Hamel of Hill Street Blues. She’s 64.

… of Joe Walsh of The Eagles. He’s 60. Life’s been good to him so far.

… of Bo Derek. She’s 51.

… of Sean Young. Ms. Young won the Razzie for worst actress AND worst supporting actress for “A Kiss Before Dying” (she played twins). She’s been nominated for the award five other times. She’s 48.

… of hottie Nadine Velazquez of “My Name Is Earl.” She’s 29.

Robert F. Kennedy might have been 82 today. He was assassinated at age 42.

Astronomer Edwin Hubble was born on this date in 1889.

During the past 100 years, astronomers have discovered quasars, pulsars, black holes and planets orbiting distant suns. But all these pale next to the discoveries Edwin Hubble made in a few remarkable years in the 1920s. At the time, most of his colleagues believed the Milky Way galaxy, a swirling collection of stars a few hundred thousand light-years across, made up the entire cosmos. But peering deep into space from the chilly summit of Mount Wilson, in Southern California, Hubble realized that the Milky Way is just one of millions of galaxies that dot an incomparably larger setting.

Hubble went on to trump even that achievement by showing that this galaxy-studded cosmos is expanding — inflating majestically like an unimaginably gigantic balloon — a finding that prompted Albert Einstein to acknowledge and retract what he called “the greatest blunder of my life.” Hubble did nothing less, in short, than invent the idea of the universe and then provide the first evidence for the Big Bang theory, which describes the birth and evolution of the universe. He discovered the cosmos, and in doing so founded the science of cosmology.

Source: TIME 100: Edwin Hubble