December 14th

Today is the birthday

… of jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player Clark Terry, 89.

Clark Terry performed with Charlie Barnet (1947) and in Count Basie’s big band and small groups (1948-51) before beginning an important affiliation with Duke Ellington, which lasted from 1951 to 1959. During this period Terry took part in many of Ellington’s suites and acquired a lasting reputation for his wide range of styles (from swing to hard bop), technical proficiency, and infectious good humor. After leaving Ellington, he became a frequent performer in New York studios and a staff member of NBC; he appeared regularly on the Tonight Show, where his unique “mumbling” scat singing became famous.

PBS – JAZZ

… of Patty Duke. The Oscar-winning actress is 63.

… of Gabriella. Vanessa Hudgens is 21 today.

Best actress Oscar nominee for Days of Wine and Roses, Lee Remick was born on this date in 1935. She is often remembered too for her performance in the classic film Anatomy of a Murder. Miss Remick died of cancer in 1991.

Don Hewitt, the long-time producer of 60 Minutes was born on this date in 1922. He died in August.

Hewitt worked as a copyboy for a New York newspaper for 15 dollars a week, then got a job with a photo agency, and then got hired away by CBS radio — since he had experience with pictures and visual layout — to help produce the new television news programming that the network was trying to launch. It was all brand-new in the 1940s, and Hewitt remembers asking them “What-avision?” He went down to Grand Central Terminal in New York and up to the top floor to take a look at these “little pictures in a box” of which people spoke. He later reminisced, “They also had cameras and lights and makeup artists and stage managers and microphone booms just like in the movies, and I was hooked.” That year, in 1948, he began producing and directing an evening news broadcast for CBS, and he would later become the executive producer of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

On September 24, 1968 Don Hewitt launched his investigative news magazine, 60 Minutes.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Congressional Medal of Honor winner Jimmy Doolittle was born on this date in 1896. Doolittle led the daring bombing raid on Tokyo in April 1942. Sixteen B-25s from the U.S.S. Hornet did little damage, but the attack on the Japanese homeland was a major public relations and morale-boosting effort for U.S. forces just five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

As predicted, Nostradamus was born on this date in 1503.

George Washington died at his Mount Vernon home on this date in 1799 at the age of 67. According to the Library of Congress, his last words reportedly were: “I feel myself going. I thank you for your attentions; but I pray you to take no more trouble about me. Let me go off quietly. I cannot last long.”

Alabama was admitted to the Union as the 22nd state on this date in 1819.

Roald Amundsen and four others became the first to reach the South Pole on this date in the summer of 1911. See the NOAA South Pole Live Camera.

And it’s the birthday of Veronica, one of the two official daughters-in-law of NewMexiKen. Veronica, like the President a graduate of Columbia University, is the mother of Sweetie Sofie and a law professor and attorney. Happy Birthday, Veronica.