According to many sources, Geronimo was born 180 years ago today.
Novelist Joyce Carol Oates is 71 today.
She published her first story, “In the Old World,” in Mademoiselle magazine (1959) just before her senior year of college, and she published her first book of short stories, By the North Gate, a few years later, in 1963. She has gone on to become one of the most prolific writers of her generation, writing more than 70 books in 40 years, including novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and essays. She writes almost everything in long hand before typing, and she usually cuts out a few hundred pages from every novel before it is published.
The Writer’s Almanac (2008)
Lamont Dozier is 68. Along with Eddie and Brian Holland, Dozier wrote a few songs you may know, among them:
Baby I Need Your Loving
Baby Love
Bernadette
Come See About Me
Nowhere To Run
I Hear a Symphony
My World Is Empty Without You
Reach Out, I’ll Be There
How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You
(Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) I Can’t Help Myself
Stop! In The Name Of Love
This Old Heart Of Mine
It’s The Same Old Song
Jimmy Mack
Roberto “No Mas” Duran is 58. In a 1980 fight with Sugar Ray Leonard, with 16 seconds remaining in the 8th round, Duran had enough. He told the referee, “No mas, no mas.”
Phil Mickelson —Lefty — is 39 today.
The thin half of the great comedy team Laurel and Hardy, Stan Laurel, was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in England on this date in 1890. Laurel was the one Hardy usually blamed, “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.”
The Astronomy Picture of the Day notes its 14th birthday today.
George Washington was appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army on June 16, 1775, and the Army Corps of Engineers began on this date in 1775 as well, when the Continental Congress resolved:
That there be a chief Engineer for the army, in a separate department, and two assistants under him; that the pay of the chief engineer be sixty dollars per month, and the pay of the assistants each, twenty dollars per month.
Happy birthday to you too Uncle Rich.