… is the birthday of Fess Parker, the actor who played Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. He’s 84.
Parker and NewMexiKen have at least one thing in common. We had the same Russian language professor in college; Parker at Texas, NewMexiKen at Arizona. He was Professor Arthur Coleman and, as I remember it, he was the very first American Ph.D. ever in Slavic languages. By the time he showed up at Arizona in the early 1960s, Coleman was more-or-less retired, staying just one year as a visiting professor — as much character as educator, which is why we learned he’d taught Fess Parker.
Actor Robert Culp is 78 today. He was Bill Cosby’s sidekick (or Cosby was his) in the first TV series to feature an African-American, I Spy.
Frank Gifford is 78 today. Kathie Lee Gifford is 55 today.
One-time Oscar nominee for best supporting actress, Lesley Ann Warren is 62 today.
Oscar-winner James Cameron is 54. Cameron won, of course, for Titanic — writer, director, best picture.
Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone is 50.
Best actress Oscar nominee Angela Bassett is 50 today too.
Supporting actor Oscar-winner Timothy Hutton is 48.
Steve Carrell is 45.
Emily Robison of the Dixie Chicks is 36. Originally Emily Erwin (Robison is her married name), she and her sister Martie (now Maguire) founded the group with two other classmates. The other two left and the group added Natalie Maines as the lead singer in 1995.
Football coach Amos Alonzo Stagg was born on this date in 1862. Stagg, Skull and Bones at Yale, was on the first All-America team ever (1889). He coached most famously at the University of Chicago, 1892-1932. Stagg developed the man-in-motion and the lateral pass — and developed basketball as a five man game. He is in both the college football and basketball halls of fame.
Elvis Presley died 31 years ago today, he was 42. Margaret Mitchell died 59 years ago today, at age 48. Babe Ruth died 60 years ago today, he was 53. Robert Johnson died 70 years ago today, he was 27.
The first issue of Sports Illustrated was published 54 years ago.