January 18th

Today is the birthday

… of Kevin Costner. Costner won the Oscars for director and best picture for Dances With Wolves and was nominated for the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Lt. John Dunbar. He’s 53 today.

… of hockey hall-of-fame inductee Mark Messier. He’s 47.

… of Jesse L. Martin. The Law & Order star is 39.

It’s also the birthday of Cary Grant (Archibald Alexander Leach, 1904-1986) and Danny Kaye (David Daniel Kaminski, 1913-1987). Both won honorary Oscars though neither won the real thing; Grant had two nominations.

A.A. Milne was born on the date in 1882.

One of Milne’s friends had just started a new magazine for children, and asked him if he would contribute. He didn’t have any interest in writing children’s literature, even though his own son was three years old and just learning how to read. But during a holiday in Wales, he found himself trapped in the house during a rainstorm with nothing to do.

Milne said, “So there I was with an exercise-book and a pencil, and a fixed determination not to leave the heavenly solitude of that summer-house until it stopped raining … and there on the other side of the lawn was a child with whom I had lived for three years … and here within me unforgettable memories of my own childhood.”  So he began writing a series of poems, most of them addressed to his son, Christopher Robin. The poems were collected in his book When We Were Very Young (1924), which was a huge success. 

Around the same time, his son had begun playing with a group of stuffed animals named Pooh Bear, Piglet, Tigger, and Eeyore in the Ashdown forest near their house. Milne loved the idea that his son played with fake animals in a real forest. In his books Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928), he turned that forest into a magical place where there are no adults, but only Christopher Robin and his animal friends.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

The first college basketball game with five players on a side was played on this date in 1896 at Iowa City, Iowa. The University of Chicago defeated the University of Iowa 15 to 12.