Category: Birthdays

Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, 94 years ago today (1915).

This from Sinatra’s New York Times obituary in 1998:

Widely held to be the greatest singer in American pop history and one of the most successful entertainers of the 20th century, Sinatra was also the first modern pop superstar. He defined that role in the early 1940’s when his first solo appearances provoked the kind of mass pandemonium that later greeted Elvis Presley and the Beatles.

During a show business career that spanned more than 50 years and comprised recordings, film and television as well as countless performances in nightclubs, concert halls and sports arenas, Sinatra stood as a singular mirror of the American psyche.

His evolution from the idealistic crooner of the early 1940’s to the sophisticated swinger of the 50’s and 60’s seemed to personify the country’s loss of innocence.

Brenda Mae Tarpley will be Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree this year (all four-foot-nine of her) at age 65 (today is Brenda Lee’s birthday).

John Kerry is 66.

Rita Moreno is 78 and Terri Garr is 62.

Melvil Dewey was born on this date in 1851. You know — Dewey, as in Dewey decimal system.

Read Dewey’s obituary in 1931 from The New York Times.

Here’s a website that seems to be the Dewey Decimal Classification headquarters.

… of Kirk Douglas. The three-time Oscar nominee is 93. NewMexiKen’s favorite Douglas performance is in Lonely Are the Brave. “Filmed on location in New Mexico, Lonely are the Brave was adapted by Dalton Trumbo from Edward Abbey’s novel Brave Cowboy.”

… of Judi Dench. The six-time Oscar nominee, one-time winner, is 75.

… of Beau Bridges. Jeff’s big brother is 68. No Oscars for Beau, but he has three wins from 10 Emmy nominations.

… of Dick Butkus, 67. The Butkus Award is given each year to the best college linebacker.

… of Tom Kite. He’s 60.

… of John Malkovich. The two-time Oscar nominee is 56.

… of Donny Osmond, 52. Fifty. Two.

… of Felicity Huffman. The Oscar nominee and Desperate Housewife is 47.

… of Jakob Dylan, son of Bob. Jakob is 40 today. He’s the youngest of his dad’s four children with first wife Sara Lownds, the Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.

Grace Hopper was born in New York City 103 years ago today.

She began tinkering around with machines when she was seven years old, dismantling several alarm clocks around the house to see how they worked. She studied math and physics in college, and eventually got a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale.

Then World War II broke out, and Hopper wanted to serve her country. Her father had been an admiral in the Navy, so she applied to a division of the Navy called WAVES, which stood for Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service. They turned her down at first[;] they said she was too old at 35, and that she didn’t weigh enough, at 105 pounds. But she wouldn’t give up, and they eventually accepted her. With her math skills, she was assigned to work on a machine that might help calculate the trajectory of bombs and rockets.

Hopper learned how to program that early computing machine, and wrote the first instruction manual for its use. And she went on to help write an early computer language known as COBOL — “Common Business-Oriented Language.” She remained in the Navy, and eventually she became the first woman ever promoted to rear admiral.

The Writers Almanac from American Public Media (2006)

… of Eli Wallach. Tuco is 94. “Hey Blondie, do you know what you are? You’re a stinking son of a….” [Theme starts.]

Wallach has 158 acting credits on IMDB.

… of Ellen Burstyn. Alice is 77. Ms. Burstyn has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress five times, winning for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in 1975. She was also nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for The Last Picture Show.

… of Johnny Bench. The Hall of Fame catcher is 62.

… of Larry Bird. The Basketball Hall of Famer is 53.

… of T.O., Terrell Owens. He’s 36, and slightly more mature than he was at 9.

The author Willa Cather was born in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, on this date in 1873. The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor has a great piece about Cather today and this, from 2005:

… Her family settled in Red Cloud, Nebraska, and she fell in love with the Nebraska landscape. She wrote, “Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth is the floor of the sky.”

She went off to college, got involved in journalism and eventually moved to New York City to edit McClure’s magazine. After living in New York for fifteen years, she quit her job and took a trip back home to Nebraska. Standing on the edge of a wheat field, she watched the first harvest that she had seen since her childhood. When she got back to the East, she began her first great novel, O Pioneers! (1913), about Alexandra Bergson, the oldest daughter of Swedish immigrant farmers, who struggles to work the family farm after her father dies. Cather went on to write many more novels about the westward expansion of the United States, including My Ántonia (1918), The Professor’s House (1925) and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).

Willa Cather said, “We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it—for a little while.”

Source: The Writer’s Almanac (2005).

… of Dave Brubeck. Dave’s taken five for 89 years.

… of Tom Hulce. The actor who played Mozart in Amadeus is 56. (The film came out in 1984.) Hulce got an Oscar nomination for that performance. He shows up from time-to-time, but the only other role that comes to mind is Larry Kroger in Animal House.

… of Steven Wright. He’s 54.

• All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.
• If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.
• How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?
• Boycott shampoo! Demand the REAL poo!
• Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
• A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I’m afraid of widths.
• A friend of mine once sent me a post card with a picture of the entire planet Earth taken from space. On the back it said, “Wish you were here.”
• I bought some batteries, but they weren’t included.
• If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer?
• What’s another word for Thesaurus?
• If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?

One of America’s great lyricists, Ira Gershwin was born on this date in 1896.

Summertime
And the livin’ is easy,
Fish are jumpin’
And the cotton is high.
Oh yo’ daddy’s rich
An’ yo’ ma is good lookin’
So hush, little baby,
Don’t you cry.

[with Dubose Heyward]

*****

You’ve made my life so glamorous
You can’t blame me for feeling amorous.
Oh! ‘S wonderful! ‘S marvelous!
That you should care for me!

‘S wonderful! ‘S marvelous!
That you should care for me!
‘S awful nice! ‘S paradise!
‘S what I love to see!

*****

The way you wear your hat,
The way you sip your tea,
The mem’ry of all that —
No, no! They can’t take that away from me!

The way your smile just beams,
The way you sing off key,
The way you haunt my dreams —
No, no! They can’t take that away from me!

… to Jeff Bridges. The four-time Oscar nominee is 60 today (three times for supporting, once for leading — Starman). He received his first Oscar nomination in 1972 and is expected to receive another this coming season for Crazy Heart.

… to Marisa Tomei. The three-time nominee and one-time winner of the best supporting actress Oscar is 45 today.

… is 74 today. I saw Woody Allen doing stand-up once upon a time when we were both a lot younger (about 45 years ago, sigh).

Here’s a few of his insights, some possibly from that very time.

“A fast word about oral contraception. I asked a girl to go to bed with me, she said ‘no’.”

“I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.”

“I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.”

“Some guy hit my fender, and I told him ‘be fruitful, and multiply.’ But not in those words.”

“I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.”

“If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever.”

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”

Vin Scully is 82 today. Scully started broadcasting Dodger games in Brooklyn in 1950.

Diane Ladd is 74. Ladd has appeared in more than 100 films and television programs and has been nominated for the best supporting actress Oscar three times including her portrayal of Flo in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and in a film with her daughter Laura Dern, Rambling Rose.

Garry Shandling is 60.

Joel Coen, the Joel of the Coen Brothers, is 55. (Ethan was 52 in September.) Films by the brothers include O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, Miller’s Crossing, Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country for Old Men, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, and A Serious Man.

Rahm Emanuel is 50.

Don Cheadle is 45. Cheadle was, of course, nominated for the best actor Oscar for his performance in Hotel Rwanda.

Mariano Rivera is 40 today. He can’t pitch forever, right?

Louisa May Alcott was born on this date in 1832. The Library of Congress’s Today in History has a lot about Alcott.

Today is the birthday

… of Oscar Robertson, 71.

Whenever basketball discussions turn to naming the greatest player in history, Oscar Robertson’s name is always prominently mentioned. Red Auerbach, who coached a slew of Hall of Famers with the Boston Celtics, rates Robertson as the best, most versatile player he has ever seen. Most other basketball experts would agree: the “Big O” could do it all. He was an unstoppable offensive player; one who could score from every spot on the court and in any manner he saw fit. Robertson’s offensive prowess changed the point guard stereotype from simply a passer and “floor general” to a scorer and offensive weapon. Robertson truly had a presence on the court.

A three-time All-State selection at Indianapolis’ Crispus Attucks High School, the “Big O” was heavily recruited and opted to remain close to home at the University of Cincinnati. Robertson’s collegiate career (1957-60) was historic: he established 19 school and 14 NCAA records and led the Bearcats to a 79-9 record and two straight NCAA tournament third place finishes in 1959 and 1960. A three-time College Player of the Year and national scoring leader at Cincinnati, Robertson scored 2,973 points (33.8 ppg), placing him seventh all-time in NCAA history.

Basketball Hall of Fame

… of Pete Best, 68. Best was the orginal drummer in The Beatles, fired in 1962 to be replaced by Ringo Starr.

… of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Donald ”Duck” Dunn, 68.

The group came together in the early Sixties at Stax Records, a studio and record store on East McLemore Avenue in Memphis. By 1962, guitarist Steve Cropper, organist Booker T. Jones and bassist Lewis Steinberg were established session musicians at Stax. They were joined on a recording date … by drummer Al Jackson, with whom Steinberg had played in the house band at Memphis’ Plantation Inn. It was during some down time at the Riley session that this lineup recorded the classic Sixties soul instrumental “Green Onions.” The definitive version of Booker T. and the MGs (which stood for “Memphis Group”) was completed in 1963, when bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn – a former schoolmate and bandmate of Cropper’s who’d been touring with the Mar-Keys, another Stax backup group – replaced Steinberg. This lineup lent instrumental fire and uncluttered rhythmic support to countless soul classics. Particularly fruitful was their relationship with Stax’s biggest star, Otis Redding. In addition to playing on virtually all of his records, the band backed him at his legendary performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 (along with the Mar-Kays) ….

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

… of Stanley Livingston, 59. He was Chip, the original third son on My Three Sons. Later Stanley’s brother Barry Livingston played an even younger son (when oldest brother Mike played by Tim Considine left the show).

… of Katherine Heigl, 31. That’s Dr. Isobel “Izzie” Stevens to you.

Also born on November 24th —

Junipero Serra (1713-1784)

“A priest in the Franciscan order of the Catholic Church, Junipero Serra was a driving force in the Spanish conquest and colonization of what is now the state of California.” (PBS – THE WEST)

Zachary Taylor (1784-1850)

Northerners and Southerners disputed sharply whether the territories wrested from Mexico should be opened to slavery, and some Southerners even threatened secession. Standing firm, Zachary Taylor was prepared to hold the Union together by armed force rather than by compromise.

Born in Virginia in 1784, he was taken as an infant to Kentucky and raised on a plantation. He was a career officer in the Army, but his talk was most often of cotton raising. His home was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and he owned a plantation in Mississippi.

But Taylor did not defend slavery or southern sectionalism; 40 years in the Army made him a strong nationalist.
(The White House)

Taylor’s early death probably delayed New Mexico’s entry into the Union by 62 years. It’s also interesting to compare this Virginian career Army officer’s thinking about the Union to another’s, that is, Robert E. Lee.

Cass Gilbert (1859-1934)

Gilbert designed the U.S. Supreme Court Building.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)

Rosa La Rouge – À Montrouge (1886-87). Click to view larger version.

Scott Joplin (1868-1917)

The great Ragtime composer left no sound recordings, but he did make several piano rolls. It’s interesting to hear his tempo.

Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)

“Many people think that if they were only in some other place, or had some other job, they would be happy. Well, that is doubtful. So get as much happiness out of what you are doing as you can and don’t put off being happy until some future date.”

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

Carlo Lorenzini (1826-1890)

As C. Collodi, he wrote a timeless story about a wooden boy named Pinocchio, whose nose grew with every lie and whose most ardent wish was to become “a real boy.”

Today is the birthday

… of Napoleon Solo. Robert Vaughn is 77. Vaughn has a Ph.D. from USC in communications.

… of Billie Jean King. She’s 66.

… of Steve Van Zandt. Little Steven, E Street Band member and Sopranos actor, is 59.

… of Jamie Lee Curtis. She’s 51.

… of Mariel Hemingway. She’s 48.

… of Boris Becker. He’s 42.

… of Scarlett Johansson. She’s 25.

Abigail Adams, America’s second first lady and the mother of the sixth president, was born on this date in 1744.

Songwriter Hoagy Carmichael was born on this date in 1899: “Stardust,” “Georgia on My Mind,” “Up The Lazy River,” “Heart and Soul.”

… of baseball hall-of-famer Stan Musial. He’s 89. Stan “The Man” graced the first cover ever of “Sports Illustrated” (1954).

24 All-Star Games… Three MVP Awards… 475 Homers… 331 Batting Average… 3,630 Hits… 1,949 Runs Scored… Three World Series Rings… 1,951 RBIs… 3,026 Games… Seven Batting Titles… A Plaque in Cooperstown… Stan-The-Man.com

… of “That Girl” Marlo Thomas, now 72.

… of Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack, Jr. That’s Dr. John, in the right place, wrong time. He’s 69 today.

… of actress Juliet Mills. Hayley’s older sister is 68. Juliet Mills first appeared in a movie in 1942, when she played an infant.

… basketball hall-of-famer Earl Monroe. The Pearl is 65.

… of writer-director-actor Harold Ramis. He’s 65. Ramis co-wrote the screenplay and directed “Groundhog Day,” enough to make me a fan. He was the doctor in the film.

… of Goldie Hawn. Kate Hudson’s mom is 64.

… of the other Judy Garland daughter, Lorna Luft. She’s 57.

… of the not so desperate Nicollette Sheridan. She’s 46.

… of Björk. She’s 44.

… of football hall-of-famer Troy Aikman. He’s 43.

… of probable future baseball hall-of-famer Ken Griffey Jr. Junior is 40.

Coleman Hawkins was born on this date in 1904.

Hawkins himself didn’t think there was anything outstanding about his Body and Soul saying “it was nothing special, just an encore I use in the clubs to get off the stand. I thought nothing of it and didn’t even bother to listen to it afterwards”. But the solo, two choruses of beautifully conceived and perfecly balanced improvisation, caused an immediate sensation with musicians and the public. It is still the standard to which tenorists aspire. A parallel can be drawn between Hawkins’ Body and Soul and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Both were brief, lucid, eloquent and timeless masterpieces, yet tossed off by their authors as mere ephemera.

Len Weinstock

Lincoln well knew what he had done at Gettysburg, but it’s a nice analogy even so.

… of U.S. Senator Robert Byrd. The West Virginian is 92. Byrd entered the Congress as a representative on January 3, 1953; he became a senator six years later. He is now the longest serving member of Congress in history, breaking Carl Hayden’s record two days ago. Hayden served Arizona from statehood until 1969.

… of Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, “who through her magnificent epic writing has — in the words of Alfred Nobel — been of very great benefit to humanity.” She’s 86.

…of best supporting actress Oscar-winner Estelle Parsons. She won the award for “Bonnie and Clyde” and was nominated again the following year for “Rachel, Rachel.” She’s 82.

… of actor and “Family Feud” host Richard Dawson. He’s 77.

… of Don DeLillo. He’s 72 today.

… of comedian Dick Smothers. The straight man of the duo is 71.

… of Vice President Joe Biden. He’s 67.

… of Veronica Hamel of Hill Street Blues. She’s 66.

… of journalist Judy Woodruff. She’s 63.

… of Joe Walsh of The Eagles. He’s 62. Life’s been good to him so far.

I have a mansion forget the price
Ain’t never been there they tell me it’s nice
I live in hotels tear out the walls
I have accountants pay for it all

They say I’m crazy but I have a good time
I’m just looking for clues at the scene of the crime
Life’s been good to me so far

My Maserati does 185
I lost my license now I don’t drive
I have a limo ride in the back
I lock the doors in case I’m attacked

… of Richard Masur. He was the neighbor/boyfriend on On Day At a Time. He’s 61 today.

… of Bo Derek. She’s now five 10s and a 3.

… of Sean Young. Ms. Young won the Razzie for worst actress AND worst supporting actress for “A Kiss Before Dying” (she played twins). She’s been nominated for the award five other times. She’s 50.

Robert F. Kennedy might have been 84 today. He was assassinated at age 42.

Astronomer Edwin Hubble was born on this date in 1889.

During the past 100 years, astronomers have discovered quasars, pulsars, black holes and planets orbiting distant suns. But all these pale next to the discoveries Edwin Hubble made in a few remarkable years in the 1920s. At the time, most of his colleagues believed the Milky Way galaxy, a swirling collection of stars a few hundred thousand light-years across, made up the entire cosmos. But peering deep into space from the chilly summit of Mount Wilson, in Southern California, Hubble realized that the Milky Way is just one of millions of galaxies that dot an incomparably larger setting.

Hubble went on to trump even that achievement by showing that this galaxy-studded cosmos is expanding — inflating majestically like an unimaginably gigantic balloon — a finding that prompted Albert Einstein to acknowledge and retract what he called “the greatest blunder of my life.” Hubble did nothing less, in short, than invent the idea of the universe and then provide the first evidence for the Big Bang theory, which describes the birth and evolution of the universe. He discovered the cosmos, and in doing so founded the science of cosmology.

Source: TIME 100: Edwin Hubble

Today is the birthday

… of Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). Inhofe is the senator who has said, “man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” He’s 75, his age having now exceeded his IQ.

… of Gordon Lightfoot. The singer is 71.

I can see her lyin’ back in her satin dress
In a room where you do what you don’t confess
Sundown, you better take care
If I find you bin creepin’ round my back stairs
Sundown, you better take care
If I find you bin creepin’ round my back stairs

… of Martin Scorsese. The Oscar-winning director is 67.

… of Danny DeVito. The actor/director/producer is 65. Very early in his career DeVito played Martini in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

… of Lorne Michaels. The producer of Saturday Night Live is 65.

So he moved back to Canada, where he formed a comedy duo with Hart Pomerantz, and they had a television variety show on Canadian television, The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour. They contracted their talents to comedic acts in the United States, writing for Phyllis Diller, Lily Tomlin, Joan Rivers, and Woody Allen. They also wrote for the NBC show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, and then NBC asked Michaels to come up with a comedy show to replace the Johnny Carson reruns that aired Saturday nights at 11 p.m.

Michaels recruited talent from all sorts of places. Dan Aykroyd was a fellow Canadian, and Chevy Chase, John Belushi, and Gilda Radner had worked on the National Lampoon show. Muppet creator Jim Henson created sketches for the show, and recent Harvard grad Al Franken was signed on as a writer. And so Michaels put together the first season, 1975–1976, and won an Emmy for it.

The Writer’s Almanac

… of Tom Seaver. Tom Terrific, the baseball hall-of-famer is 65.

… of Elvin Hayes. The basketball hall-of-famer is 64.

… of Howard Dean. The physician politician is 61.

… of Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. The actress is 51. Mastrantonio was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for “The Color of Money.”

… of Daisy Fuentes, 43. Sophie Marceau is 43, too.

Rock Hudson was born on this date in 1925; he died in 1985. Hudson got a best actor Oscar nomination for “Giant.”

Soichiro Honda was born on this date in 1906; he died in 1991. Honda started as an auto mechanic at age 15.

Today is not the birthday

… of Chris Noth. He hit the double-nickel yesterday.

But today is the birthday

… of Buckwheat Zydeco. He’s 62.

Contemporary zydeco’s most popular performer, accordionist Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural was the natural successor to the throne vacated by the death of his mentor Clifton Chenier; infusing his propulsive party music with strains of rock and R&B, his urbanized sound — complete with touches of synthesizer and trumpet — married traditional and contemporary zydeco with uncommon flair, in the process reaching a wider mainstream audience than any artist before him. (allmusic)

… of Prince Charles. He’s 61. I thought it was “ladies-in-waiting,” not princes-in-waiting.

… of Condoleezza Rice. She’s 55.

… of Yanni (Yawn-ee). He’s 55.

… of Laura San Giacomo. She’s 48.

Today is the birthday of Astrid Lindgren, born Astrid Ericsson in Sweden in 1907.

She’s the creator of Pippi Longstocking, a nine-year-old girl with no parents who lives in a red house at the edge of a Swedish village with her horse and her pet monkey, Mr. Nilsson. She has red pigtails, and she wears one black stocking and one brown, with black shoes twice as long as her feet. She eats whole chocolate cakes and sleeps with her feet on the pillow, and she’s the strongest girl in the world.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media (2006)

Composer Aaron Copland was born on November 14, 1900, in Brooklyn to Russian-Jewish immigrants.

In 1942, Copland began working with Martha Graham on Appalachian Spring, a ballet that eventually won the 1944 Pulitzer Prize in music. The Library of Congress’s Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation commissioned the work from Graham and Copland. Between July 1942 and July 1943, Graham sent three scripts to Copland. On receiving the third script, Copland wrote the music we know as Appalachian Spring.

Hearing the music, Graham revised the action yet again:

I have been working on your music. It is so beautiful and so wonderfully made. I have become obsessed by it. But I have also been doing a little cursing, too, as you probably did earlier over that not-so-good script. But what you did from that has made me change in many places. Naturally that will not do anything to the music, it is simply that the music made me change. It is so knit and of a completeness that it takes you into very strong hands and leads you into its own world. And there I am.

In the end, no script accompanied what Copland called “Ballet for Martha” and Graham retitled, Appalachian Spring. A splendid collaboration between American masters of music and dance, the ballet premiered at the Library of Congress’s Coolidge Auditorium in 1944.

Library of Congress

First Lady Mamie Eisenhower was born on this date in 1896. She died in 1979.

Joseph McCarthy was born on this date in 1908. Fortunately he died in 1957.

Claude Monet was born on this date in 1840. He died in 1926.

The term “impressionist” is derived from Monet’s painting Impression, soleil levant.

Click to view larger version.

Mary Travers, Mary of Peter, Paul & Mary, would have been 73 today.

Cardinals hall-of-fame pitcher Bob Gibson is 74.

Over 17 seasons with the Cardinals, Bob Gibson won 20 games five times and established himself as the very definition of intimidation, competitiveness, and dignity. One of the best athletes to ever play the game, the ex-Harlem Globetrotter posted a 1.12 ERA in 1968, the lowest figure since 1914, and was named the National League Cy Young Award winner and Most Valuable Player. Known as a premier big-game pitcher, Gibson posted World Series records of seven consecutive wins and 17 strikeouts in a game, and was named World Series MVP in 1964 and 1967.

National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

The Incredible Hulk, Lou Ferrigno, is 58.

Benjamin Banneker was born on November 9, 1731, in Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland.

Largely self-taught, Banneker was one of the the first African Americans to gain distinction in science. His significant accomplishments and correspondence with prominent political figures profoundly influenced how African Americans were viewed during the Federal period.

Banneker spent most of his life on his family’s 100-acre farm outside Baltimore. There, he taught himself astronomy by watching the stars and learned advanced mathematics from borrowed textbooks. In 1752, Banneker garnered public acclaim by building a clock entirely out of wood. The clock, believed to be the first built in America, kept precise time for decades. Twenty years later, Banneker began making astronomical calculations that enabled him to successfully forecast a 1789 solar eclipse. His estimate, made well in advance of the celestial event, contradicted predictions of better-known mathematicians and astronomers.

Library of Congress

Gail Borden, the inventor of condensed milk, was born on this date in 1801. His timing was perfect. He patented the milk just before the civil war when it’s use as part of the field ration made it a success. Borden was also instrumental in requiring dairy farmers to maintain clean facilities if they wanted to sell their milk to his company — Eagle Brand.

The first of seven African-Americans to be nominated for a best actress Oscar, Dorothy Dandridge was born on this date in 1922. She was nominated for Carmen Jones in 1955.

And 70 years ago the Holocaust began:

Today is the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night in 1938 when Hitler ordered a series of supposedly spontaneous attacks on Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues. The idea was to make the attacks look random, and then accuse the Jews of inciting the violence. In all, more than 1,000 synagogues were burned or destroyed. Rioters looted about 7,500 Jewish businesses and vandalized Jewish hospitals, homes, schools, and cemeteries. The event was used to justify barring Jews from schools and most public places, and forcing them to adhere to new curfews. In the days following, thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps. The event was called Kristallnacht, which means, “Night of Broken Glass.” It’s generally considered the official beginning of the Holocaust. Before that night, the Nazis had killed people secretly and individually. After Kristallnacht, the Nazis felt free to persecute the Jews openly, because they knew no one would stop them.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media (2007)

Mike Nichols is 78 today. Nichols has been nominated for four best director Oscars, winning for “The Graduate.”

Sally Field is 63. Field has won two best actress Oscars (because the Academy really likes her); one for “Norma Rae” and the other for “Places in the Heart.”

Glenn Frey of The Eagles is 61.

Blues singer Rory Block is 60. So is jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval.

California’s first lady, Maria Shriver, is 54.

Ethan Hawke is 39. Hawke has been nominated for two Oscars, one for supporting actor, “Training Day,” and one for co-writing, “Before Sunset.” Hawke has also published novels, including The Hottest State and Ash Wednesday.

Thandie Newton is 37. Miss Newton’s mother is Zimbawbean, her father English.

James Jones was born on November 6th in 1921.

He’s best known as the author of the military novel From Here to Eternity (1951). At the urging of his father, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1939. He was stationed in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He went on to fight in the battle of Guadalcanal, where he was wounded, earning the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He kept a journal while he was in the Army, and when he got home from the war, he wrote a novel about the experience of disillusioned veterans. It was rejected by all the major publishing houses, but the editor Maxwell Perkins liked a particular scene from the novel and told him to expand it. He spent five years expanding that scene, and it became the novel From Here to Eternity (1951), the story of a soldier’s life in the years leading up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The novel was a huge international best-seller, in part because Jones tried to portray military life as realistically as possible, using dirty language in the dialogue and describing soldiers’ reckless sex lives.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

New Yorker founder Harold Ross was born in Aspen, Colorado, on November 6, 1892.

Walter “Big Train” Johnson was born 122 years ago today. Johnson was one of the first five players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame — along with Cobb, Ruth, Mathewson and Wagner.

There were no sophisticated measuring devices in the early 1900s, but Walter Johnson’s fastball was considered to be in a class by itself. Using a sweeping sidearm delivery, the Big Train fanned 3,508 over a brilliant 21-year career with the Washington Senators, and his 110 shutouts are more than any pitcher. Despite hurling for losing teams most of his career, he won 417 games – second only to Cy Young on the all-time list – and enjoyed 10 successive seasons of 20 or more victories.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

James Naismith was born on this date in 1861. He’s the guy that created basketball and for whom the basketball hall-of-fame is named — and basketball’s most prestigious trophies. Dr. James Naismith’s 13 Original Rules of Basketball.

John Philip Sousa was born on November 6, 1854.

Sousa said a march ‘should make a man with a wooden leg step out’, and his surely did. However, he was no mere maker of marches, but an exceptionally inventive composer of over two hundred works, including symphonic poems, suites, songs and operettas created for both orchestra and for band. John Philip Sousa personified the innocent energy of turn-of-the-century America and he represented America across the globe. His American tours first brought classical music to hundreds of towns.

Naxos.com

Abraham Lincoln was elected president on this date in 1860.

Today is the birthday

… of Robert Caro, born on this date in 1936. The Writer’s Almanac (2005) tells us about Caro, including this:

Since 1974, Caro has been working on a four-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. He says he picked Johnson to write about because he wanted to write about political power, and he believes Lyndon Johnson was the most masterful getter and user of political power in the 20th century. For his research on Johnson, Caro has gone through 34 million documents at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, and he has conducted more than 1,000 interviews. He lived in Johnson’s hometown for three years so that he could get to know the people there well enough that they would open up to him. He also tracked down every living member of Johnson’s grammar school class.

Caro eventually uncovered the fact that Johnson had committed an unprecedented series of lies, manipulations, and vote tampering on his way to becoming a United States Senator. But what fascinated Caro was the fact that a politician who would commit such crimes in order to get power could still use that power for good. He points out that, when Johnson got into office, he became the greatest advocate for civil rights of any politician since Abraham Lincoln.

Caro’s third volume Master of the Senate won the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.

… of Rudolfo Anaya, 72.

[B]orn in Pastura, New Mexico, in 1937. He grew up in the village of Santa Rosa, and he grew up speaking only Spanish, listening to folktales while he helped his family harvest. He went to college, then he taught middle school and high school. And in the evenings, he started to write a book, a fictionalized account of life in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. He couldn’t get it published, but finally, in 1972, he found a small press in California, and it became a classic: Bless Me, Última.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor (2008)

… of Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane, 70.

… of songwriter Eddie Holland, 70.

… of Otis Williams of the Temptations, 68 today.

… of Henry Winkler. The Fonz, is 64.

… of Timothy B. Schmit, of the Eagles is 62. Before the Eagles, he was in Poco.

… of Terry “The Toad.” Charles Martin Smith is 56 today.

Ezra Pound was born in Halley, Idaho, on this date in 1885.

Ezra Pound is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry. . . . His own significant contributions to poetry begin with his promulgation of Imagism, a movement in poetry which derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry–stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language, and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter in order to, in Pound’s words, “compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome.” His later work, for nearly fifty years, focused on the encyclopedic epic poem he entitled The Cantos.

Poets.org

José Manuel Gallegos was born in Abiquiú, Nuevo México, on this date in 1815.

His people were Hispanos, descendants of early Spanish settlers, and Gallegos went on to become New Mexico’s first delegate to the U.S. Congress.

Raised during the Mexican revolution, Gallegos was surrounded by republican ideals during his formative years of education with the Franciscan missionaries in Taos and Durango. Ordained a Catholic priest at age 25, Gallegos readily added political tasks to his clerical responsibilities. He became pastor of San Felipe de Neri church in La Villa de Albuquerque, as well as one of the nineteen “electors,” men who chose Nuevo México’s deputy to the Mexican Congress.

In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded the Southwest, from Texas to California, to the United States. Nuevo México became the U.S. territory of New Mexico, and Gallegos was elected to its first Territorial Council. He won the election for delegate to the U.S. Congress in 1853, the second Hispanic Congressional Representative in U.S. history. Thirty-one years had elapsed since Joseph Marion Hernández, from the territory of Florida, had become the first Hispanic in Congress in 1822.

Suspended from the priesthood for refusing to accept the authority of French religious superior, Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy (who became the subject of Willa Cather’s novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop), Gallegos put increasing energy into his political life. Subsequently, he was elected to the New Mexico Territorial House of Representatives, served as treasurer of the territory, and was superintendent of New Mexico Indian affairs. Gallegos returned to the U.S. House of Representatives for a second term in 1871.

— Library of Congress

Today is the birthday

… of football hall-of-fame quarterback Yelberton Abraham “Y.A.” Tittle, 83.

Career record: 2,427 completions, 33,070 yards, 242 TDs, 13 games over 300 yards passing…Paced 1961, 1962, 1963 Giants to division titles…Threw 33 TD passes in 1962, 36 in 1963…NFL’s Most Valuable Player, 1961, 1963.

… of Bill Wyman. The Rolling Stones’ bassist (1962-1992) is 73.

… of F. Murray Abraham. The Oscar-winning best actor (Amadeus) is 70 today.

… of Kevin Kline. The Oscar-winning best supporting actor (A Fish Called Wanda) is 62 today.

Bob Kane, the cartoonist who created “Batman” was born on October 24, 1915. From his Times obituary in 1998:

In 1938 he started drawing adventure strips, ”Rusty and His Pals” and ”Clip Carson,” for National Comics. That same year, a comic-book hero called Superman appeared. Vincent Sullivan, the editor of National Comics, who also owned Superman, asked Mr. Kane and Mr. Finger to come up with a Supercompetitor. They developed Batman on a single weekend. Mr. Kane was 18 [23].

The first Batman strip came out in May 1939 in Detective Comics, one year after the debut of Superman. Batman’s first adventure was called ”The Case of the Chemical Syndicate.” And he was another kind of superhero entirely. Batman wasn’t as strong as Superman, but he was much more agile, a better dresser and had better contraptions and a cooler place to live.

He lived in the Batcave, drove the Batmobile, which had a crime lab and a closed-circuit television in the back, and owned a Batplane. He also kept a lot of tools in his utility belt, including knockout gas, a smoke screen and a radio.

”Since he had no superpowers, he had to rely only on his physical and his mental skills,” said Allan Asherman, the librarian of DC Comics.

Playwright and director Moss Hart was born on October 24th in 1904.

A distinguished librettist, director, and playwright who was particularly renowned for his work with George S. Kaufman. Hart is reported to have written the book for the short-lived “Jonica” in 1930, but his first real Broadway musical credit came three years later when he contributed the sketches to the Irving Berlin revue “As Thousands Cheer.” Subsequent revues for which he co-wrote sketches included “The Show Is On,” “Seven Lively Arts,” and “Inside USA.” During the remainder of the ’30s Hart wrote the librettos for “The Great Waltz” (adapted from the operetta “Waltzes of Vienna”), “Jubilee,” “I’d Rather Be Right” (with Kaufman), and “Sing Out the News” (which he also co-produced with Kaufman and Max Gordon). In 1941 he wrote one of his wittiest and most inventive books for “Lady in Dark,” which starred Gertrude Lawrence, and gave Danny Kaye his first chance on Broadway.

Thereafter, as far as the musical theater was concerned, apart from the occasional revue, Hart concentrated mostly on directing, and sometimes producing, shows such as Irving Berlin’s “Miss Liberty,” and Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s smash hits “My Fair Lady” and “Camelot.” He won a Tony Award for his work on “My Fair Lady.” His considerable output for the straight theater included “Light up the Sky,” “The Climate of Eden,” “Winged Victory,” and (with Kaufman) “Once in a Lifetime,” “You Can’t Take It With You” (for which they both won the Pulitzer Prize), and “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” Hart also wrote the screenplays for two film musicals, HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (1952) and the 1954 remake of A STAR IS BORN, starring Judy Garland. His absorbing autobiography, ACT ONE, was filmed in 1963 with George Hamilton as Hart and Jason Robards as Kaufman.

Broadway: The American Musical . Stars Over Broadway | PBS

Coast-to-coast telegraph service was completed on this date in 1861.

Thursday, October 24th, 1929 — Black Thursday — was the first of the three most significant days of the stock market crash (the others were Monday the 28th and Tuesday the 29th).

Whitey Ford is 81.

Edward Whitey Ford was the big-game pitcher on the great Yankees teams of the 1950s and early ’60s, earning him the moniker Chairman of the Board. The wily southpaw’s lifetime record of 236-106 gives him the best winning percentage (.690) of any 20th century pitcher. He paced the American League in victories three times, and in ERA and shutouts twice. The 1961 Cy Young Award winner still holds many World Series records, including 10 wins and 94 strikeouts, once pitching 33 consecutive scoreless innings in the Fall Classic.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

Steve Cropper is 68. According to the All Music Guide:

Probably the best-known soul guitarist in the world, Cropper came to prominence in the early ’60s, first with the Mar-Keys (“Last Night”), then as a founding member of Booker T. & the MG’s. A major figure in the Southern soul movement of the ’60s, Cropper made his mark not only as a player and arranger (most notably on classic sides by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett) but as a songwriter as well, co-writing the classic “In the Midnight Hour.”

And Green Onions is the single greatest rock instrumental ever, period (Booker T. Jones, organ; Steve Cropper, guitar; Lewis Steinberg, bass; Al Jackson, drums).

M.G.’s stands for the British motor car and not for Memphis Group. Chips Moman of Stax founded the band and named it for his car. Moman had played with Jones in an earlier band, the Triumphs. Stax changed the origin of the M.G.’s story when Moman left the label. Steve Cropper confirmed Moman’s version on Fresh Air in 2007.

Judy Sheindlin (“Judge Judy”) is 67.

The daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher is 53. That’s Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia.

Ken Watanabe is 50.

Dizzy Gillespie was born on October 21, 1917.

Dizzy Gillespie was one of the principal developers of bop in the early 1940s, and his styles of improvising and trumpet playing were imitated widely in the 1940s and 1950s. Indeed, he is one of the most influential players in the history of jazz.
. . .

Early in 1953, someone accidentally fell on Gillespie’s trumpet, which was sitting upright on a trumpet stand, and bent the bell back. Gillespie played it, discovered that he liked the sound, and from that point on had trumpets built for him with the bell pointing upwards at a 45 degree angle. The design is his visual trademark — for more than three decades he was virtually the only major trumpeter in jazz playing such an instrument.

PBS – JAZZ A Film by Ken Burns

Alfred Nobel was born on this date in 1833. He was the owner of a weapons manufacturer and inventor of dynamite.

Nobel’s enormous legacy — the impetus to leave the prize money now awarded to Nobel laureates — actually stemmed from an event that left him with feelings of great indignation. After his older brother Ludvig died, a French newspaper printed a scathing obituary of Alfred Nobel, who was in fact alive and well. The writer was allegedly confused about who had died, and he used the obituary to write a condemnation of Alfred’s life and work. “Le marchand de la mort est mort (‘The merchant of death is dead’),” the newspaper proclaimed — and also, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”
Alfred Nobel read the obituary about himself and was so upset that this was to be his legacy that he rewrote his will to establish a set of prizes celebrating humankind’s greatest achievements.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

NewMexiKen’s parents eloped 67 years ago today. She was a high school senior just turned 17. He was a 19-year-old sailor. My grandmother told her new son-in-law she didn’t know whether to kiss him or kick him.

Today is the birthday

… of William Christopher. M.A.S.H.‘s Father Francis Mulcahy is 77.

… of Hall-of-Fame pitcher Juan Marichal, 72.

The pride of both the Dominican Republic and the Giants, Juan Antonio Marichal Sánchez won 243 games and lost only 142 over 16 marvelous seasons. The high-kicking right-hander enjoyed six 20-win seasons, hurled a no-hitter in 1963 and was named to nine All-Star teams. The Dominican Dandy twice led the National League in complete games and shutouts, finishing 244 contests during his career, while fanning 2,303 and compiling a 2.89 ERA. After his playing days, Marichal became minister of sports in his homeland.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

… of Tom Petty; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is 59.

In a sense, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are America’s band. Durable, resourceful, hard-working, likeable and unpretentious, they rank among the most capable and classic rock bands of the last quarter century. They’ve mastered the idiom’s fundamentals and digested its history while stretching themselves creatively and contributing to rock’s legacy. Moreover they are, like such compatriots as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, a people’s band, writing of everyday struggles and frustrations while offering redemption through tough-minded, big-hearted, tuneful songs.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

… of Calvin Cordozar Broadus. Snoop Dogg is 38.

Actor Jerry Orbach was born on this date in 1935.

Hall-of-famer Mickey Mantle was born on this date in 1931 and died in 1995.

Mickey Mantle was a star from the start, parlaying a talent for the game and boyish good looks into iconic status. In spite of a series of devastating injuries, Mantle accumulated a long list of impressive accomplishments, finishing his 18-year career with 536 home runs and a .298 batting average. The switch-hitting Commerce Comet won three MVP Awards (1956, ’57, ’62) and a Triple Crown (1956). He contributed to 12 pennants and seven World Series titles in his first 14 seasons while establishing numerous World Series records, including most home runs (18).

National Baseball Hall of Fame

Bela Lugosi was born on this date in 1882. The Romanian-born actor (part of Austria-Hungary then) was best known for playing Count Dracula in the 1931 film. Lugosi died in 1956.

Today is the birthday

… of Bob Strauss, the politico and diplomat. Ambassador Strauss is 91. Once upon a time NewMexiKen’s boss was Bob Strauss Jr.

… of John LeCarre. The author is 78.

… of Peter Max. The artist is 72.

… of John Lithgow. He’s 64. He’s become somewhat a buffoon on TV in the sitcoms and commercials. Makes it hard to remember that he’s twice been nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar — Terms of Endearment and The World According to Garp.

… of Jeannie C. Riley, singer of the hit “Harper Valley P.T.A.” She, too, is 64.

… of Jennifer Holliday. The Tony Award winner is 49.

… of Evander Holyfield, 47.

… of one-time first daughter Amy Carter. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s little girl is 42.

… of academy award nominee for directing Jason Reitman. He’s 32. The nomination was for Juno.

Robert Reed was born on this date in 1932. A fine actor but one who will always be remembered most as the dad on The Brady Bunch. Reed’s best TV role was as Kenneth Preston, son in the excellent early 1960s father-son lawyer drama The Defenders. His father was played by E. G. Marshall. Reed died in 1992.

Winston Hubert McIntosh was born on this date in 1944. A founding member of The Wailers, Peter Tosh also was an international solo star and songwriter. He was shot and killed along with five others by a friend during an argument on September 11, 1987.

It’s Chuck Berry’s birthday. He’s 83.

While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together. It was his particular genius to graft country & western guitar licks onto a rhythm & blues chassis in his very first single, “Maybellene.” Combined with quick-witted, rapid-fire lyrics full of sly insinuations about cars and girls, Berry laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance. The song included a brief but scorching guitar solo built around his trademark double-string licks. Accompanied by long-time piano player Johnnie Johnson and members of the Chess Records house band, including Willie Dixon, Berry wrote and performed rock and roll for the ages. To this day, the cream of Berry’s repertoire—which includes “Johnny B. Goode,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Rock and Roll Music” and “Roll Over Beethoven”—is required listening for any serious rock fan and required learning for any serious rock musician.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

And, if that weren’t enough, Keith Jackson is 81. Whoa, Nelly.

Arthur Miller, the playwright (The Crucible, Death of a Salesman) and one-time husband of Marilyn Monroe, was born on this date in 1915.

In the period immediately following the end of World War II, American theater was transformed by the work of playwright Arthur Miller. Profoundly influenced by the Depression and the war that immediately followed it, Miller tapped into a sense of dissatisfaction and unrest within the greater American psyche. His probing dramas proved to be both the conscience and redemption of the times, allowing people an honest view of the direction the country had taken.

American Masters

Miller used the money he made from All My Sons to buy 400 acres of farmland in Connecticut. In 1948, he moved to Connecticut by himself and spent several months building a 10-by-12-foot cabin by hand. As he sawed the wood and pounded the nails, he thought about the main characters of his next play: a salesman, his wife, and his two sons. He knew how the play would begin, but he wouldn’t let himself start writing until he had finished the cabin. When it was finally completed, he woke up one morning and started writing. He wrote all day, had dinner, and then wrote until he had finished the first act in the middle of the night. When he finally got in bed to go to sleep, he found that his cheeks were wet with tears, and his throat was sore from speaking and shouting the lines of dialogue as he wrote.

The play was Death of a Salesman (1949), about a man named Willy Loman who loses his job and realizes that he doesn’t have much to show for his life’s work. Miller wrote, “For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Margarita Carmen Cansino was born on this date in 1918. That’s her in the photo known by then as Rita Hayworth. She was married five times including Orson Welles and Prince Aly Khan (she had a daughter with each of them). That’s Rita in some excerpts from Gilda (1946) below.

Montgomery Clift was born on October 17 in 1920. Clift was nominated for the best actor Oscar three times and supporting actor once. He played Prewitt, the bugler who won’t box, in From Here to Eternity.

It’s also the birthday

… of Jimmy Breslin. The columnist is 79.

… of Margot Kidder. Lois Lane is 61.

… of George Wendt. Norm is 61.

Sam: What’ll you have Normie?
Norm: Well, I’m in a gambling mood Sammy. I’ll take a glass of whatever comes out of that tap.
Sam: Looks like beer, Norm.
Norm: Call me Mister Lucky.

… of country singer Alan Jackson; he’s 51.

… of golfer Ernie Els, 40.

And of Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem. He’s 37.