Annie Dillard is 70 today. Ms. Dillard won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974). The New York Times has a page with links to several reviews and articles about Dillard and her works. (Eudora Welty wrote the review of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.) And Ms. Dillard has a web site.
Basketball hall-of-famer Isiah Thomas turns 54 today.
Radio and television actress Eve Arden was born on April 30th in 1908. To my generation she was Our Miss Brooks, English teacher at Madison High. The show was on radio from 1948-1957 and TV from 1952-1956. Many considered it a breakthrough character for women. That’s Our Miss Brooks in the photo with Richard Crenna as Walter Denton and Gale Gordon as Principal Osgood Conklin.
Casey Jones wrecked his train on April 30th in 1900.
John Luther Jones from Cayce (pronounced Cay-see), Kentucky, famous to us through song as a brave engineer who romantically died trying to make up time. In truth, he crashed his locomotive at high speed into a freight train that was attempting to get out of the way on a siding. According to reports he failed to heed warning signals that were out. The accident took place early in the morning of April 30, 1900. Jones was the only fatality. Jones was known for his affability and his skill in blowing a train whistle. His engine wiper, Wallace Saunders, reportedly idolized the engineer. Saunders wrote the original song. All you might want to know can be found in this 1928 article.
George Washington took office as the first president of the U.S. on this date in 1789. His term began March 4th, but because neither the House nor Senate achieved a quorum until April, Washington’s unanimous election on February 4, wasn’t made official until April 14. Washington immediately departed Mount Vernon for New York to take the oath and was met along the way with parades and dinners in every little town. As James Madison noted, Washington was about the only aspect of the new government that really appealed to people.
Louisiana entered the union as the 18th state on this date in 1812.
Today is the birthday of Carol Burnett, 82, and Bobby Rydell, 73.
Duane Eddy was born on this date in 1938, which would make him 77 today. Eddy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
One of the earliest guitar heroes, Duane Eddy put the twang in rock and roll. “Twang” is a reverberating, bass-heavy guitar sound boasted by primitive studio wizardry. Concocted by Eddy and producer Lee Hazlewood in 1957, twang came to represent the sound of revved-up hot rods and an echo of the Wild West on the frontier of rock and roll. Eddy obtained his trademark sound by picking on the low strings of a Chet Atkins-model Gretsch 6120 hollowbody guitar, turning up the tremolo and running the signal through an echo chamber. Behind the mighty sound of twang, Eddy became the most successful instrumentalist in rock history, charting fifteen Top Forty singles in the late Fifties and early Sixties. He has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. No less an authority than John Fogerty has declared, “Duane Eddy was the front guy, the first rock and roll guitar god.” Eddy’s influence is widespread in rock and roll. A twangy guitar drove Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” and twang echoes in the work of the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Dave Edmunds, Chris Isaak and many more.
“Cannonball,” “Rebel Rouser,” “Forty Miles of Bad Road” — they make me want to cruise Speedway Boulevard all over again.
Bernard Malamud was born on this date in 1914. Malamud twice won the National Book Award (The Magic Barrel, The Fixer) and the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (The Fixer). He’s also the author of The Natural.
Gertrude Pridgett was born on this date in 1886. She began performing in 1900, singing and dancing in minstrel shows. In 1902, she married performer William “Pa” Rainey and became known as Ma Rainey.
If Bessie Smith is the acknowledged “Queen of the Blues,” then Gertrude “Ma” Rainey is the undisputed “Mother of the Blues.” As music historian Chris Albertson has written, “If there was another woman who sang the blues before Rainey, nobody remembered hearing her.” Rainey fostered the blues idiom, and she did so by linking the earthy spirit of country blues with the classic style and delivery of Bessie Smith. She often played with such outstanding jazz accompanists as Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, but she was more at home fronting a jugband or washboard band.
Frederick Law Olmsted was born on this date in 1822. He was America’s foremost landscape architect of the 19th century and the designer of New York’s Central Park.
… was born 102 years ago today. We know him as Muddy Waters.
And how important was Muddy Waters to early Rock?
You’ve heard of The Rolling Stones, and “Like a Rolling Stone,” and Rolling Stone magazine. All named for Waters’ early hit, “Rollin’ Stone.”
Muddy Waters transformed the soul of the rural South into the sound of the city, electrifying the blues at a pivotal point in the early postwar period. His recorded legacy, particularly the wealth of sides he cut in the Fifties, is one of the great musical treasures of this century. Aside from Robert Johnson, no single figure is more important in the history and development of the blues than Waters. The real question as regards his lasting impact on popular music isn’t “Who did he influence?” but – as Goldmine magazine asked in 2001 – “Who didn’t he influence?”
Benito Pablo Juárez García was born on this date in 1806. Juárez was five times President of Mexico, the first indigenous national to serve. He was a reformer, resisted the French occupation in 1865 and is considered one of Mexico’s great political leaders.
Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany, on this date in 1685. “Music…should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the recreation of the soul; where this is not kept in mind there is no true music, but only an infernal clamor and ranting.”
Today should be a national holiday. February 26 is the birthday of Fats Domino, Johnny Cash, Jackie Gleason, John Harvey Kellogg and Buffalo Bill.
It’s the birthday of Antoine “Fats” Domino. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer is 87.
Fats Domino may not have been the most flamboyant rock and roller of the Fifties, but he was certainly the figure most rooted in the worlds of blues, rhythm & blues and the various strains of jazz that gave rise to rock and roll. With his boogie-woogie piano playing and drawling, Creole-inflected vocals, Antoine “Fats” Domino Jr. help put his native New Orleans on the map during the early rock and roll era. He was, in fact, a key figure in the transition from rhythm & blues to rock and roll – a transition so subtle, especially in his case, that the line between these two nominally different forms of music blurred to insignificance.
Born in the Big Easy in 1928, pianist, singer and songwriter Fats Domino ultimately sold more records (65 million) than any Fifties-era rocker except Elvis Presley. Between 1950 and 1963, he made Billboard’s pop chart 63 times and its R&B chart 59 times. Incredible as it may seem, Fats Domino scored more hit records than Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Buddy Holly put together. His best-known songs include “Ain’t That a Shame,” “Blueberry Hill” and “I’m Walkin’.”
It’s the birthday of Mitch Ryder. He’s 70 today. No report on the ages of the Detroit Wheels.
It’s the birthday of Michael Bolton. The singer is 62. The former Initech computer programmer’s age isn’t known.
Johnny Cash was born on this date in 1932.
To millions of fans, Johnny Cash is “the Man in Black,” a country-music legend who sings in an authoritative baritone about the travails of working men and the downtrodden in this country. Lesser known is the fact that Johnny Cash was present at the birth of rock and roll by virtue of being one of the earliest signees to Sam Phillips’ Sun Records back in 1955. Cash was part of an elite club of rock and roll pioneers at Sun that included Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. The four were collectively referred to as “the Million Dollar Quartet” after an impromptu gathering and jam session at the Sun recording studio on December 4, 1956. What Cash and his group, the Tennessee Two, brought to the “Sun Sound” was a spartan mix of guitar, standup bass and vocals that served as an early example of rockabilly. Cash recorded a string of rockabilly hits for Sun that included “Cry, Cry, Cry,” “Folsom Prison Blues” and “I Walk the Line.” The latter was first of more than a dozen Number One country hits for Cash and also marked his first appearance on the national pop singles charts.
Straddling the country, folk and rockabilly idioms, Johnny Cash has crafted more than 400 plainspoken story-songs that describe and address the lives of coal miners, sharecroppers, Native Americans, prisoners, cowboys, renegades and family men.
Betty Hutton was born on this date in 1921. She was Annie Oakley in the eponymous 1950 film, and the trapeze artist who saves the circus in The Greatest Show on Earth, still a fun movie to watch.
Jackie Gleason was born in Brooklyn 99 years ago today (1916). One of the greats of early TV, known primarily now for his portrayal of bus driver Ralph Kramden in the Honeymooners. He was in a number of films and received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor in The Hustler. Gleason also won a Tony Award. “And away we go” was one of Gleason’s stock lines. It is also the inscription at his grave site.
Grover Cleveland Alexander was born on this date in 1887.
Upon Alexander’s death in 1950, famed sportswriter Grantland Rice penned that the winner of 373 big league games was the most cunning, the smartest, and the best control pitcher that baseball had ever seen, adding, “Above everything else, Alex had one terrific feature to his pitching – he knew just what the batter didn’t want – and he put it there to the half-inch.”
Alexander was portrayed by Ronald Reagan in the 1952 film “The Winning Team.”
John Harvey Kellogg was born on this date in 1852.
When he became a physician Dr. Kellogg determined to devote himself to the problems of health, and after taking over the sanitarium he put into effect his own ideas. Soon he had developed the sanitarium to an unprecedented degree, and he launched the business of manufacturing health foods. He gained recognition as the originator of health foods and coffee and tea substitutes, ideas which led to the establishment of huge cereal companies besides his own, in which his brother, W. K. Kellogg, produced the cornflakes he invented. His name became a household word.
There might have been something to it. Kellogg lived to be 91.
And William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was born on this date in 1846.
In a life that was part legend and part fabrication, William F. Cody came to embody the spirit of the West for millions, transmuting his own experience into a national myth of frontier life that still endures today.
All the while Cody was earning a reputation for skill and bravery in real life, he was also becoming a national folk hero, thanks to the exploits of his alter ego, “Buffalo Bill,” in the dime novels of Ned Buntline (pen name of the writer E. Z. C. Judson). Beginning in 1869, Buntline created a Buffalo Bill who ranked with Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone and Kit Carson in the popular imagination, and who was, like them, a mixture of incredible fact and romantic fiction.
Cody’s own theatrical genius revealed itself in 1883, when he organized Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, an outdoor extravaganza that dramatized some of the most picturesque elements of frontier life: a buffalo hunt with real buffalos, an Indian attack on the Deadwood stage with real Indians, a Pony Express ride, and at the climax, a tableau presentation of Custer’s Last Stand in which some Lakota who had actually fought in the battle played a part. Half circus and half history lesson, mixing sentimentality with sensationalism, the show proved an enormous success, touring the country for three decades and playing to enthusiastic crowds across Europe.
In later years Buffalo Bill’s Wild West would star the sharpshooter Annie Oakley, the first “King of the Cowboys,” Buck Taylor, and for one season, “the slayer of General Custer,” Chief Sitting Bull. Cody even added an international flavor by assembling a “Congress of Rough Riders of the World” that included cossacks, lancers and other Old World cavalrymen along with the vaqueros, cowboys and Indians of the American West.
Steven Hill, District Attorney Adam Schiff of Law and Order, is 93 today.
Dominic Chianese, Corrado “Uncle Junior” Soprano, is 84.
Edward James Olmos is 68.
Honus Wagner was born on this date in 1874. He was one of the original five inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame – with Cobb, Johnson, Mathewson and Ruth. He was the first to have his name etched on a Louisville Slugger.
Hall of Fame skipper John McGraw called Honus Wagner “The nearest thing to a perfect player no matter where his manager chose to play him”. Honus Wagner played 21 seasons, primarily with his hometown team the Pittsburgh Pirates, and was the total package. He could hit for average and power and could change the dynamics of a game on the base paths and in the field– he played every position on the diamond in his major league career except for catcher.
Winslow Homer was born on this date in 1836. That’s his Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), 1873-1876, below.
From the late 1850s until his death in 1910, Winslow Homer produced a body of work distinguished by its thoughtful expression and its independence from artistic conventions. A man of multiple talents, Homer excelled equally in the arts of illustration, oil painting, and watercolor. Many of his works—depictions of children at play and in school, of farm girls attending to their work, hunters and their prey—have become classic images of nineteenth-century American life. Others speak to more universal themes such as the primal relationship of man to nature.
… was born 283 years ago today on February 11, 1731*.
Gilbert Stuart, The Athenaeum, 1796 Click for larger version.
To describe George Washington as enigmatic may strike some as strange, for every young student knows about him (or did when students could be counted on to know anything). He was born into a minor family in Virginia’s plantation gentry, worked as a surveyor in the West as a young man, was a hero of sorts during the French and Indian War, became an extremely wealthy planter (after marrying a rich widow), served as commander in chief of the Continental Army throughout the Revolutionary War (including the terrible winter at Valley Forge), defeated the British at the Battle of Yorktown, suppressed a threatened mutiny by his officers at Newburgh, N.Y., then astonished the world and won its applause by laying down his sword in 1783. Called out of retirement, he presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, reluctantly accepted the presidency in 1789 and served for two terms, thus assuring the success of the American experiment in self-government.
…
Washington was, after all, a magnificent physical specimen. He towered several inches over six feet, had broad shoulders and slender hips (in a nation consisting mainly of short, fat people), was powerful and a superb athlete. He carried himself with a dignity that astonished; when she first laid eyes on him Abigail Adams, a veteran of receptions at royal courts and a difficult woman to impress, gushed like a schoolgirl. On horseback he rode with a presence that declared him the commander in chief even if he had not been in uniform.
Other characteristics smack of the supernatural. He was impervious to gunfire. Repeatedly, he was caught in cross-fires and yet no bullet ever touched him. In a 1754 letter to his brother he wrote that “I heard Bullets whistle and believe me there was something charming in the Sound.” During the Revolutionary War he had horses shot from under him but it seemed that no bullet dared strike him personally. Moreover, when the Continental Army was ravaged by a smallpox epidemic, Washington, having had the disease as a youngster, proved to be as immune to it as he was to bullets.
Ron Chernow was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for Washington: A Life.
__________
* By the Julian calendar, George Washington was born on February 11, 1731. Twenty years later Britain and her colonies adopted the Gregorian calendar, the calendar we use today. The change added 11 days and designated January rather than March as the beginning of the year. As a result, Washington’s birthday became February 22, 1732.
… of Patricia Nixon Cox. The former first daughter is 69, too.
… of Frasier Crane. Kelsey Grammer is 60 today.
… of Mary Chapin Carpenter. Celebrating, and one hopes, feeling lucky, she’s 57 today.
… of Ellen Page. The one-time Oscar nominee is 28.
Erma Bombeck was born on this date in 1927. NewMexiKen thought Bombeck funniest when she really was a a full-time mom. When she became rich and famous the humor often seemed more contrived and strained. But then I’d rather be rich and famous than funny, too.
Anaïs Nin was born on this date in 1903 and named Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell. I almost passed over the French author, but figured if she was good enough for a Jewel song she was good enough for NewMexiKen’s list of birthdays. Anaïs Nin was French born of Cuban parents.
The great classical guitarist Andrés Segovia was born on this date in 1893. This from his obituary in The New York Times in 1987.
The guitarist himself summed up his life’s goals in an interview with The New York Times when he was 75 years old: ”First, to redeem my guitar from the flamenco and all those other things. Second, to create a repertory – you know that almost all the good composers of our time have written works for the guitar through me and even for my pupils. Third, I wanted to create a public for the guitar. Now, I fill the biggest halls in all the countries, and at least a third of the audience is young – I am very glad to steal them from the Beatles. Fourth, I was determined to win the guitar a respected place in the great music schools along with the piano, the violin and other concert instruments.”
The Washington Monument was dedicated 130 years ago today. Malcolm X was shot and killed 50 years ago today.
A good day to watch Lilies of the Field, Poitier’s wonderful, enjoyable Academy Award-winning performance.
Sidney Poitier and Lilia Skalia, Lilies of the Field, 1962.
Ansel Adams was born on this date in 1902.
In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Mr. Adams combined a passion for natural landscape, meticulous craftsmanship as a printmaker and a missionary’s zeal for his medium to become the most widely exhibited and recognized photographer of his generation.
His photographs have been published in more than 35 books and portfolios, and they have been seen in hundreds of exhibitions, including a one-man show, ”Ansel Adams and the West,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1979. That same year he was the subject of a cover story in Time magazine, and in 1980 he received the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
In addition to being acclaimed for his dramatic landscapes of the American West, he was held in esteem for his contributions to photographic technology and to the recognition of photography as an art form.
… of Oscar winner George Kennedy. Dragline is 90. Kennedy won the best supporting actor Oscar for that role in Cool Hand Luke.
… of Toni Morrison, “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” That’s what they said when she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She’s 84 today.
… of the woman who broke up the Beatles. She’s 82 today. That’s Yoko Ono.
Cybill Shepherd in The Last Picture Show. She’s 65 today.
… of Juice Newton. She’s 63.
… of Vinnie Barbarino. He’s 61 today. So are Vincent Vega, Chili Palmer, Michael, Buford ‘Bud’ Uan Davis, Tod Lubitch, Danny Zuko and Tony Manero. And so is John Travolta.
… of the world’s foremost letter turner. Vanna White is 58 today.
… of one-time Oscar nominee Matt Dillon, 51.
… of Andre Romelle Young. Dr. Dre is 50.
… of Molly Ringwald. She’s 47.
Wallace Stegner was born on this date in 1909.
Enzo Ferrari was born on February 18, 1898. I only mention him so I can post the car porn (above).
Louis Comfort Tiffany was born on February 18, 1848.
Mr. Tiffany’s paintings in oils and water-colors were chiefly of Oriental scenes. He also executed decorative work and is best known for his work in glass. He devised new formulas for decorative designs in this medium know as “Tiffany Favrile glass.” It was produced by the Tiffany Studios, of which he was president and art director.
Mr. Tiffany also was vice president and director of Tiffany & Co., jewelers, and vice president and director of Tiffany & Co. Safe Deposit Company.
… of Jim Brown, 79. Brown was listed as the 4th greatest athlete of the 20th century by ESPN. (Which makes him the second greatest athlete born on this date.)
Brown played only nine seasons for the Cleveland Browns — and led the NFL in rushing eight times. He averaged 104 yards a game, a record 5.2 yards a pop. He ran for at least 100 yards in 58 of his 118 regular-season games (he never missed a game). He ran for 237 yards in a game twice, scored five touchdowns in another game and four times scored four touchdowns. He rushed for more than 1,000 yards in seven seasons, scorching opponents for 1,527 yards in one 12-game season and 1,863 in a 14-game season.
“For mercurial speed, airy nimbleness, and explosive violence in one package of undistilled evil, there is no other like Mr. Brown,” wrote Pulitzer Prize winning sports columnist Red Smith.
Jordan was the ranked the top athlete of the 20th century by ESPN. Here’s what they had to say: Michael Jordan transcends hoops.
“What has made Michael Jordan the First Celebrity of the World is not merely his athletic talent,” Sports Illustrated wrote, “but also a unique confluence of artistry, dignity and history.”
… of Oscar-nominee Hal Holbrook, 90. Here he is as Mark Twain in 1967.
… of Rene Russo, 61, still young enough to be chased by 34-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler.
… of Lou Diamond Phillips, 53.
… of Paris Hilton, 34 today, a walking argument for the inheritance tax.
H.L. Hunt was born on this date in 1889. Hunt was a Texas oil tycoon who, among other things, fathered 14 children with three women, including two that he was married to simultaneously.
Lamar Hunt, one of those 14, was one of the founders of the American Football League and owner of the Dallas Texans (who became the Kansas City Chiefs).
[Lamar] Hunt may not have looked it, but he had a lot of money. His father, the legendary H.L. Hunt, had a fortune estimated at $600 million, which may not seem all that impressive in today’s era of billionaires but made him one of the nation’s richest men at the time.
It was the elder Hunt who came up with the best-remembered quote from the AFL era. After his son reportedly lost $1 million in his first season, H.L. was asked how long Lamar could keep doing that. According to various reports, he said Lamar would go broke in about 150 years if he kept it up.
And it was on February 17, 1801, that Thomas Jefferson was elected president and not Aaron Burr.
Republican Jefferson defeated Federalist John Adams by a margin of 73 to 65 electoral votes. When presidential electors cast their votes, however, they failed to distinguish between the office of president and vice president on their ballots. Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr each received 73 votes. With the votes tied, the election was thrown to the House of Representatives. There, each state voted as a unit to decide the election.
Still dominated by Federalists, the sitting Congress loathed to vote for Jefferson—their partisan nemesis. For six days, Jefferson and Burr essentially ran against each other in the House. Votes were tallied over thirty times, yet neither man captured the necessary majority of nine states. Eventually, a small group of Federalists, led by James A. Bayard of Delaware, reasoned that a peaceful transfer of power required the majority choose the President, and a deal was struck in Jefferson’s favor.
Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart was born in Salzburg on this date in 1756. Theophilus—or Gottlieb—or Amadé means “loved by God.” As an adult Mozart signed Wolfgang Amadé Mozart or simply Mozart. In the family he was known as Wolfgangerl or Woferl.
The actor James Cromwell is 75. Cromwell was nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for Babe. So the pig had the lead role?
Mikhail Baryshnikov is 67.
Chief Justice John Roberts is 60 today.
Cris Collinsworth is 56
Keith Olbermann is 56.
Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies is 54. At 29 People thought she was one of the 50 most beautiful.
Peter Fonda’s daughter — Henry Fonda’s granddaughter — Bridget is 51.
Patton Oswalt is 46.
Oscar-winner Donna Reed was born in Denison, Iowa, on January 27, 1921. She won for a supporting role in From Here to Eternity.
Donna Reed as Alma: I do mean it when I say I need you. ‘Cause I’m lonely. You think I’m lying, don’t you? Montgomery Clift as Robert E. Lee “Prew’ Prewitt: Nobody ever lies about being lonely.
1992 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Elmore James was born on January 27th in 1918.
Bluesman Elmore James was inspired by the local performances of Robert Johnson to take up the guitar. It was, in fact, a number by Johnson (“Dust My Broom”) that became James’ signature song and laid the foundation for his recording career. First cut by James in August 1951, “Dust My Broom” contains the strongest example of his stylistic signature: a swooping, full-octave opening figure on slide guitar. His influence went beyond that one riff, however, as he’s been virtually credited with inventing blues rock by virtue of energizing primal riffs with a raw, driving intensity.
Rickover underwent submarine training between January and June 1930. His service as head of the Electrical Section in the Bureau of Ships during World War II brought him a Legion of Merit and gave him experience in directing large development programs, choosing talented technical people, and working closely with private industry.
Assigned to the Bureau of Ships in September 1947, Rickover received training in nuclear power at Oak Ridge Tennessee and worked with the bureau to explore the possibility of nuclear ship propulsion.
In February 1949 he received an assignment to the Division of Reactor Development, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and then assumed control of the Navy’s effort as Director of the Naval Reactors Branch in the Bureau of Ships. This twin role enabled him to lead the effort to develop the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus (SSN-571). The latter joined the fleet in January 1955.
Promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral by 1958, Rickover exerted tremendous personal influence over the nuclear Navy in both an engineering and cultural sense. His views touched matters of design, propulsion, education, personnel, and professional standards. In every sense, he played the role of father to the nuclear fleet, its officers, and its men.
After sixty-four years of service, Rickover retired from the Navy as a full admiral on 19 January 1982.
… Then he met Oscar Hammerstein II, who became a lifelong friend, and the two collaborated on Show Boat in 1927. This musical gave us the songs “Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.” In 1933, Kern and Hammerstein produced Roberta, which included the famous song “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”
Kern moved to Hollywood in 1935, and he enjoyed success there. He wrote “The Way You Look Tonight” for the movie Swing Time, and the song won an Academy Award. In 1941, Kern and Hammerstein wrote “The Last Time I Saw Paris” because Paris had just been occupied by Nazi Germany, and that song also won an Academy Award.
Billings Learned Hand was born on this date in 1872.
Learned Hand served as a federal judge longer than any other man—52 years. His opinions were prodigious, totaled more than 2,000, covering every phase of the law from maritime liens to complicated antitrust cases. His tart observations (“Judges can be damned fools like anybody else”) were treasured. On the bench. Judge Hand was a formidable figure, a stocky man with the broad shoulders of his Kentish forebears, glittering eyes under dense brows, and craggy features that might have been carved by Gutzon Berglum. Intolerant of lawyers who strayed from the point or became too verbose. Judge Hand sent wayward attorneys scampering back to the facts with an acid query—”May I inquire, sir, what are you trying to tell us?”—or just a furious “Rubbish!”‘ Once, confronting the ferocious old judge at a Yale Law School moot court, a terrified student fainted dead away.
In writing his decisions. Hand followed the meticulous painstaking procedure that he demanded in his court. He invariably wrote three or four drafts of every opinion in longhand on yellow foolscap before the language and reasoning finally satisfied him. His opinions cut to the marrow of the issue and proceeded eloquently but rapidly to the point. Hand’s famed 28-page opinion on United States v. Aluminum Co. of America, in which he ruled that “good” monopolies had no more legality than “bad” monopolies, was distilled from 40,000 pages and four years of testimony, has been a model for every subsequent antitrust suit.
Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albrecht von Preußen was born on this date in 1859. His mother was Victoria, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom, and his father was Prince Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia. He was the first grandchild of Queen Victoria. Wilhelm became King of Prussia and German Emperor in 1888. He abdicated in November 1918, but lived until 1941.
And he would become two-thirds of a tweed-wearing Englishman when he was in England. Then he’d go back to Berlin and he’d become a Prussian prince dressing up in German uniforms – eventually a German emperor, with even more uniforms. He had this really split personality. But the interesting and most important thing for European diplomacy and the future of the continent – which was going to lead up to the First World War – was Wilhelm’s admiration and envy of the British navy. He was from an almost landlocked country, which didn’t have and didn’t need a navy and yet he was taught to love the sea and ships.
“He was a symbol of a political system that was out of control. There was no one authority that actually could operate, even though the law said that he was it. So, when the time came for major decisions to make, you both have a vision that the Kaiser’s hysterical, and that he makes the decisions.
“The answer is probably both, and neither, because the real core of the German Empire is the army and the navy. They run the show before the First World War behind the scenes. They run it during the war from the Front.”
Edward Smith, the captain of the RMS Titanic, was born on this date in 1850. He went down with his ship on April 15, 1912.
Samuel Gompers was born in London in 1850 and came to New York in 1863.
Samuel Gompers was the first and longest-serving president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL); it is to him, as much as to anyone else, that the American labor movement owes its structure and characteristic strategies. Under his leadership, the AFL became the largest and most influential labor federation in the world. It grew from a marginal association of 50,000 in 1886 to an established organization of nearly 3 million in 1924 that had won a permanent place in American society. In a society renowned for its individualism and the power of its employer class, he forged a self-confident workers’ organization dedicated to the principles of solidarity and mutual aid. It was a singular achievement.
. . .
As a local and national labor leader, Gompers sought to build the labor movement into a force powerful enough to transform the economic, social and political status of America’s workers. To do so, he championed three principles. First, he advocated craft or trades unionism, which restricted union membership to wage earners and grouped workers into locals based on their trade or craft identification. This approach contrasted with the effort of many in the Knights of Labor to organize general, community-based organizations open to wage earners as well as others, including employers. It also contrasted sharply with the “one big union” philosophy of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Second, Gompers believed in a pure-and-simple unionism that focused primarily on economic rather than political reform as the best way of securing workers’ rights and welfare. Gompers’s faith in legislative reform was dashed in the 1880s after the New York Supreme Court overturned two laws regulating tenement production of cigars that he had helped pass. Gompers saw that what the state gave, it could also take away. But what workers secured through their own economic power in the marketplace, no one could take away.
Third, when political action was necessary, as Gompers increasingly came to believe in his later years, he urged labor to follow a course of “political nonpartisanship.” He argued that the best way of enhancing the political leverage of labor was to articulate an independent political agenda, seek the endorsement of existing political parties for the agenda and mobilize members to vote for those supporting labor’s agenda.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born January 27, 1832. We know him as Lewis Carroll.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
John Chivington was born on this date in 1821.
The hero of Glorietta Pass and the butcher of Sand Creek, John M. Chivington stands out as one of the most controversial figures in the history of the American West.
. . .
When the Civil War broke out, Colorado’s territorial governor, William Gilpin, offered Chivington a commission as a chaplain, but he declined the “praying” commission and asked for a “fighting” position instead. In 1862, Chivington, by that point a Major in the first Colorado Volunteer Regiment, played a critical role in defeating confederate forces at Glorietta Pass in eastern New Mexico, where his troops rapelled down the canyon walls in a surprise attack on the enemy’s supply train. He was widely hailed as a military hero.
. . .
A month later, while addressing a gathering of church deacons, he dismissed the possibility of making a treaty with the Cheyenne: “It simply is not possible for Indians to obey or even understand any treaty. I am fully satisfied, gentlemen, that to kill them is the only way we will ever have peace and quiet in Colorado.”
Several months later, Chivington made good on his genocidal promise. During the early morning hours of November 29, 1864, he led a regiment of Colorado Volunteers to the Cheyenne’s Sand Creek reservation, where a band led by Black Kettle, a well-known “peace” chief, was encamped. Federal army officers had promised Black Kettle safety if he would return to the reservation, and he was in fact flying the American flag and a white flag of truce over his lodge, but Chivington ordered an attack on the unsuspecting village nonetheless. After hours of fighting, the Colorado volunteers had lost only 9 men in the process of murdering between 200 and 400 Cheyenne, most of them women and children. After the slaughter, they scalped and sexually mutilated many of the bodies, later exhibiting their trophies to cheering crowds in Denver.
… was born in Yorba Linda, California, 102 years ago today.
NewMexiKen was contacted by the staff working with Richard Nixon on his memoirs, RN, many years ago. I was asked to see if I could determine — from among the Nixon papers in my custody — the time of day he was born. As I remember it, my research was inconclusive. Someone else’s must have been helpful. The memoirs begin:
I was born in a house my father built. My birth on the night of January 9, 1913, coincided with a record-breaking cold snap in our town of Yorba Linda, California.
Nixon, by the way, did not use his middle name or initial. Though you always see him referred to as Richard M. Nixon, he himself signed as Richard Nixon and he titled his memoir RN.
Ernie Davis, the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy, was born on this date in 1939. Davis played for Syracuse — he was on their undefeated National Championship team as a sophomore in 1959 — and wore the same number as Jim Brown, 44. He was the number one pick in the 1962 NFL draft, selected by the Washington franchise. Davis was the first African-American drafted by the Washington team, and then only under pressure from Stewart Udall who, as Secretary of the Interior, controlled the stadium where the team played. Davis refused to play for Washington, hence the trade to Cleveland. During the summer of 1962 Davis was diagnosed with acute monocytic leukemia; he died the following May.
Curly Howard (Jerome Lester Horwitz) was born on this date in 1903. The most popular of the Three Stooges, Curly had no formal training and was often improvising. According to older brother Moe Howard, “If we were going through a scene and he’d forget his words for a moment, you know. Rather than stand, get pale and stop, you never knew what he was going to do. On one occasion he’d get down to the floor and spin around like a top until he remembered what he had to say.” It’s said Curly squandered all his money on wine, food, women, homes, cars, and especially dogs. Sounds like good choices, but they took their toll. Curly Howard died at age 48 in 1952 after a series of strokes.
Two country music immortals were born on September 8th.
Jimmie Rodgers, considered the “Father of Country Music,” was born in Meridian, Mississippi, on September 8, 1897. He died from TB in 1933. Jimmie Rodgers was the first person inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and among the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
James Charles Rodgers, known professionally as the Singing Brakeman and America’s Blue Yodeler, was the first performer inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He was honored as the Father of Country Music, “the man who started it all.” From many diverse elements—the traditional melodies and folk music of his southern upbringing, early jazz, stage show yodeling, the work chants of railroad section crews and, most importantly, African-American blues—Rodgers evolved a lasting musical style which made him immensely popular in his own time and a major influence on generations of country artists.
Patsy Cline, the most popular female country singer in recording history, was born in Winchester, Virginia, on September 8, 1932. She died in a plane crash in 1963. Patsy Cline is an inductee of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Cline is invariably invoked as a standard for female vocalists, and she has inspired scores of singers including k. d. lang, Loretta Lynn, Linda Ronstadt, Trisha Yearwood, and Wynonna Judd. Her brief career produced the #1 jukebox hit of all time, “Crazy” (written by Willie Nelson) and her unique, crying style and vocal impeccability have established her reputation as the quintessential torch singer.
… of German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born in Frankfurt on this date in 1749. Goethe said, “One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
… of Mother Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, the first American-born Saint, born in New York City on this date in 1774.
… of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, born near Tula on this date in 1828.
… of ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson, born in Jamestown, New York, on this date in 1908.
… of Nancy Kulp, Miss Hathaway of The Beverly Hillbillies, was born on August 28th in 1921. She died in 1991.
Eilleen Regina Edwards was born 49 years ago today. We know her better as Shania Twain.
Maureen O’Hara is 94 today. Once voted one of the five most beautiful women in the world, Miss O’Hara is probably best known now as Natalie Wood’s unbelieving mother in the classic Miracle on 34th Street (filmed when O’Hara was 26); or perhaps as Esmeralda to Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul is 82.
Robert De Niro is 71 today. De Niro has been nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar five times, winning for Raging Bull in 1981. He also won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role as the young Vito Corleone in Godfather II. De Niro’s other nominations were for Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Awakenings and Cape Fear, and in 2013 for supporting in Silver Linings Playbook.
Novelist Jonathan Franzen is 55 today. His The Corrections won the 2001 National Book Award.
Sean Penn is 54 today. Penn has been nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar five times, winning for Mystic River and Milk. Penn’s other nominations were for Dead Man Walking, Sweet and Lowdown and I Am Sam.
Football coach/commentator Jon Gruden is 51.
Davy Crockett — frontiersman, soldier, three-term congressman, restless soul — was born on this date in 1786. As congressman 1827-1831 and 1833-1835, Crockett opposed many of President Andrew Jackson policies, particularly the Indian Removal Act. Crockett published A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett. Written by Himself in 1834. When he lost reelection that year he went to Texas, where he died at the Alamo on March 6, 1836.
After seeing Mae’s jewelry the coat check girl exclaims, “Goodness, what lovely diamonds!” Mae replies, “Goodness had nothing to do with it.” That’s screen legend Mae West in Night After Night. Ms. West was born on this date in 1893.
Francis Gary Powers was born on August 17, 1929. The CIA pilot was shot down over Soviet airspace on May 1, 1960, flying in a U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. It was a major international incident. He was convicted of espionage but released in 1962 in a prisoner exchange. Upon arriving home he was criticized for not activating the plane’s self-destruct mechanism (he said it didn’t work) and not killing himself. He was largely exonerated and was ultimately highly decorated much of it long after his death. Powers died in 1977 when his Los Angles news helicopter crashed.
As the star attraction of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, she thrilled audiences around the world with her daring shooting feats. Her act helped fuel turn-of-the-century nostalgia for the vanished, mythical world of the American West. Over time she became an American legend — the loud, brassy, cocksure shooter celebrated in the musical “Annie Get Your Gun.” But that legend had little to do with the real Annie Oakley. Although famous as a Western sharpshooter, Oakley lived her entire life east of the Mississippi. A champion in a man’s sport, she forever changed ideas about the abilities of women, yet she opposed female suffrage. Her fame and fortune came from her skill with guns, yet she was a Quaker.
Larry McMurtry’s excellent essay “Inventing the West” from the August 2000 issue of The New York Review of Books tells us about this famous performer.
Annie Oakley (Phoebe Ann Moses—or Mosey) grew up poor in rural Ohio, shot game to feed her family, shot game to sell, was pressed into a shooting contest with a touring sharpshooter named Frank Butler, beat him, married him, stayed with him for fifty years, and died three weeks before he did in 1926.
When Annie Oakley and Frank Butler offered themselves to Cody the Colonel was dubious. His fortunes were at a low ebb, and shooting acts abounded. But he gave Annie Oakley a chance. She walked out in Louisville before 17,000 people and was hired immediately. Nate Salsbury, Cody’s tight-fisted manager, who did not spend lavishly and who rarely highlighted performers, happened to watch Annie rehearse and promptly ordered seven thousand dollars’ worth of posters and billboard art.
Annie Oakley more than justified the expense. Sitting Bull, normally a taciturn fellow, saw her shoot in Minnesota and could not contain himself. Watanya cicilia, he called her, his Little Sure Shot. Small, reserved, Quakerish, she seemed to live on the lemonade Buffalo Bill dispensed free to all hands. In London she demolished protocol by shaking hands with Princess Alexandra. She shook hands with Alexandra’s husband, the Prince of Wales, too, though, like his mother the Queen, she strongly disapproved of his behavior with the ladies. In France the Parisians were glacially indifferent to buffalo, Indians, cowboys, and Cody—Annie Oakley melted them so thoroughly that she had to go through her act five times before she could escape. In Germany she likened Bismarck to a mastiff.
In 1901 she was almost killed in a train wreck. Annie claimed that it was the wreck that caused her long auburn hair to turn white overnight; skeptics said her hair turned white because she left it in hot water too long while at a spa. She continued to shoot into the 1920s. In her last years she looked rather like Nancy Astor. Will Rogers visited her not long before her death and pronounced her the perfect woman. Probably not until Billie Jean King and the rise of women’s tennis had a female outdoor performer held the attention of so many people. She became part of the “invention” that is the West by winning her way with a gun: a man’s thing, the very thing, in fact, that had won the West itself.
Annie was her nickname as a child. Oakley was a stage name. Offstage she referred to herself as Mrs. Frank Butler.
Photo taken 1902 when Oakley was 42. Click image for larger version.
… was born 102 years ago today. Hogan was the great golfer of mid-century, overcoming injuries from a severe, near-fatal auto accident. Hogan won four U.S. Opens, two Masters, two PGAs and one British Open between 1946-53.
At some point NewMexiKen read a story about Hogan playing in a pro-am. The duffer with him kept asking how he, Hogan, did this and how he did that, as if the amateur could match Hogan’s skills if only he used the right club. Finally, after a wonderful chip shot, the amateur asked Hogan which club he had used. That was too much. Hogan proceeded to pull out every club in his bag and make perfect chip shots onto the green with each.
Castro wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. (He says he was 12, but should have been 13 or 14.) “If you like, give me a ten dollars bill green american in the letter [back] because never have I not seen a ten dollars bill green american and I would like to have one of them.” Castro went on to say, “I don’t know very English but I know very much Spanish and I suppose you [FDR] don’t know very Spanish but you know very English because you are American but I am not American.”
Perhaps if FDR had given him the $10 history might have been different.
I saw Castro give a speech outside the Hotel Nacional in Havana in 1993.
Cantinflas, the great Mexican comedian, acrobat and musician — and bullfighter — was born 103 years ago today. His actual name was Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes. Cantinflas appeared in more than 50 films, most famously as Passepartout in Michael Todd’s 1956 Around the World in Eighty Days. In English-speaking countries, David Niven was billed as the star. Elsewhere Cantinflas took top billing — he was the highest paid actor in the world at the time. He saved the movie from the stiff Niven if you ask me.
William Goldman is 83 today. He won Oscars for best original screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and best adapted screenplay for All the President’s Men. Other screenplays he has written include The Princess Bride, adapted from his own novel, Heat, Harper, Maverick and Marathon Man.
Parnelli Jones is 81 today. Jones won the Indianapolis 500 in 1963.
George Hamilton is 75 today.
Mark Knopfler is 65. Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free.
Pete Sampras is 43.
Katharine Lee Bates was born on this date in 1859. A poet, she is best remembered for the words to “America the Beautiful,” first published in 1895 and refined until 1913. She had been to the top of Pikes Peak in 1893.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
If you know anything about mythology you probably first learned about it from Edith Hamilton, born on this date in 1867. Hamilton’s book Mythology, written after she had retired as a school head mistress, was published in 1942.
Christy Mathewson was born on this date in 1880. Mathewson was one of the original five inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936 — with Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner and Walter Johnson. Mathewson had died in 1925.
As charismatic and popular as any player in the early 1900s, the college-educated Christy Mathewson won 373 games over 17 seasons, primarily for the New York Giants. Using his famous fadeaway pitch, Matty won at least 22 games for 12 straight years beginning in 1903, winning 30 games or more four times. A participant in four World Series, Mathewson’s lone title came in 1905 when he tossed three shutouts in six days against the Athletics. He set the modern National League mark with 37 wins in 1908.
The movie producer Cecil B. DeMille was born on August 12th in 1881. Known for his extravaganzas (e.g., The Ten Commandments), DeMille won his only Oscar for The Greatest Show on Earth (still fun to watch if you ever went to the circus under the Big Top).
Three-time Emmy winner Jane Wyatt, Margaret Anderson of Father Knows Best and Spock’s mother on Star Trek, was born 104 years ago today. Her Emmys were in 1958, 1959 and 1960. She died in 2006.
The actor, director John Derek was born on August 12, 1926 (he died in 1998). Derek’s wives included Ursula Andress, Linda Evans and Bo Derek.
Alvis Edgar Owens Jr. was born on August 12, 1929. As Buck Owens with his band the Buckaroos he had 21 number one country music hits. Owens also co-hosted the television comedy-variety show Hee Haw 1969-1986.
And it’s the birthday of Zerna Sharp, born in Hillisburg, Indiana, on this date in 1889. According to The Writer’s Almanac a few years back, Ms. Sharp is the woman who —
invented the characters Dick and Jane to help teach children how to read…Sharp’s idea was to use pictures and repetition to teach children new words. She took her idea to Dr. William S. Gray, who had been studying the way children learn to read, and he hired her to create a series of textbooks. She didn’t write the books, but she created the characters Dick, Jane, their sister Sally, their dog Spot, and their cat Puff. Each story introduced five new words, one on each page.
The IBM PC (Personal Computer) was released 33 years ago today.
Cleopatra VII Philopator committed suicide on this date in 30 B.C. She was Ptolemaic Queen of Egypt for 21 years (ruling with her two brother-husbands and her son). In addition to her two brothers, her spouses were Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. She wasn’t yet 39 when she died.
William Clark, the Clark of Lewis and Clark, was born on this date in 1770. He died in 1838. Here is Clark’s journal entry on his 36th birthday [1806] from Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online. He was on the Yellowstone River in what is now eastern Montana.
We Set out early as usial the wind was high and ahead which caused the water to be a little rough and delayed us very much aded to this we had Showers of rain repeetedly all day at the intermition of only a fiew minits between them. My Situation a very disagreeable one. in an open Canoe wet and without a possibility of keeping my Self dry. the Country through which we passed is in every respect like that through which I passed yesterday. The brooks have all Some water in them from the rains which has fallen. this water is excessively muddy. Several of those brooks have Some trees on their borders as far as I can See up them. I observe Some low pine an cedar on the Sides of the rugid hills on the Stard. Side, and Some ash timber in the high bottoms. the river has more Sand bars today than usial, and more Soft mud. the current less rapid. at 2 P. M. I was obliged to land to let the Buffalow Cross over. not withstanding an island of half a mile in width over which this gangue of Buffalow had to pass and the Chanel of the river on each Side nearly ¼ of a mile in width, this gangue of Buffalow was entirely across and as thick as they could Swim. the Chanel on the Side of the island the went into the river was crouded with those animals for ½ an hour. [NB: I was obliged to lay to for an hour] the other Side of the island for more than 3/4 of an hour. I took 4 of the men and killed 4 fat Cows for their fat and what portion of their flesh the Small Canoes Could Carry that which we had killed a few days ago being nearly Spoiled from the wet weather. encamped on an Island Close to the Lard Shore. two gangues of Buffalow Crossed a little below us, as noumerous as the first.
Francis Scott Key was born on August 1st in 1779.
Richard Henry Dana, author of the classic memoir Two Years Before the Mast, was born on August 1st in 1815. His trip to California was 1834-1836. Subsequently he graduated from Harvard Law School, practiced law and was a prominent abolitionist. Two Years Before the Mast (before the mast meaning among the crew, not as an officer) was published in 1840.
Herman Melville was born on August 1st in 1819. The Writer’s Almanac had a brief bio that included this:
The Melvilles then settled into a farm near Pittsfield, Massachusetts. It was here, in 1850, that Melville would meet Nathaniel Hawthorne, whom Melville would come to think of as a dear friend and confidant. The following year, after an intoxicating period of exploring the ideas of transcendentalism and allegorical writing, Melville penned his enduring masterpiece, Moby Dick, the lyrical, epic story of Ahab and the infamous white whale, dedicating it to Hawthorne in “admiration for his genius.” Moby Dick was met with mixed reviews. The London News declared Melville’s power of language “unparalleled,” while the novel was criticized elsewhere for its unconventional storytelling, and Melville’s fans were disappointed not to find the same kind of adventure story they had loved in Typee and Omoo. It was the beginning of the end of Melville’s career as a novelist and, following a series of literary failures, he turned to farming and writing articles to support his family.
The moniker “Mother” Jones was no mere rhetorical device. At the core of her beliefs was the idea that justice for working people depended on strong families, and strong families required decent working conditions. In 1903, after she was already nationally known from bitter mine wars in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, she organized her famous “march of the mill children” from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt’s summer home on Long Island. Every day, she and a few dozen children — boys and girls, some 12 and 14 years old, some crippled by the machinery of the textile mills — walked to a new town, and at night they staged rallies with music, skits, and speeches, drawing thousands of citizens. Federal laws against child labor would not come for decades, but for two months that summer, Mother Jones, with her street theater and speeches, made the issue front-page news.
The rock of Mother Jones’ faith was her conviction that working Americans acting together must free themselves from poverty and powerlessness. She believed in the need for citizens of a democracy to participate in public affairs.
NewMexiKen has known about Mother Jones since the eponymous magazine first came out in 1976. What amazes me is that I had no knowledge of her before that, despite majoring in American history, and even though “For a quarter of a century, she roamed America, the Johnny Appleseed of activists.”
Robert Todd Lincoln, the first child of Abraham Lincoln and the only one to survive to adulthood, was born on this date in 1843. He died in 1926. (Lincoln’s son Eddie was born in 1846 and died in 1850. Son Willie died at age 12 in 1862. Son Tad (Thomas) died at age 18 in 1871.)
Jerry Garcia was born on this date in 1942. He died in 1995.
Elliot Charles Adnopoz was born 83 years ago today. He is known as Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, prominent among the folk singers of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and very influential on Bob Dylan.
Radio and television actress Eve Arden was born on April 30th in 1908. To my generation she was Our Miss Brooks, English teacher at Madison High. The show was on radio from 1948-1957 and TV from 1952-1956. Many considered it a breakthrough character for women. That’s Our Miss Brooks in the photo with Richard Crenna as Walter Denton and Gale Gordon as Principal Osgood Conklin. 
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As charismatic and popular as any player in the early 1900s, the college-educated Christy Mathewson won 373 games over 17 seasons, primarily for the New York Giants. Using his famous fadeaway pitch, Matty won at least 22 games for 12 straight years beginning in 1903, winning 30 games or more four times. A participant in four World Series, Mathewson’s lone title came in 1905 when he tossed three shutouts in six days against the Athletics. He set the modern National League mark with 37 wins in 1908.