Category: Birthdays

Twelve individuals have walked on the surface of the moon.

The first of them, Neil Armstrong, is 79 today.

Marsha Brady (Maureen McCormick) is 53.

NewMexiKen is taking the day off to celebrate the blog’s sixth anniversary.
The posts today are being written by readers just like you. This is from Debby.

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1993 – Rwandian Hutu’s and Tutsi’s sign peace treaty in Arusha. [Apparently, it didn’t take.]

1987 – The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to present controversial issues “fairly”.

1977 – President Carter establishes Department of Energy

1971 – U.S. launches 1st satellite into lunar orbit from manned spacecraft

1964 – North Vietnamese torpedo US ships Gulf of Tonkin

1956 – Elvis Presley releases “Hound Dog”

1949 – NBL and NBAA merge into National Basketball Association

1944 – Anne Frank and her family arrested in Amsterdam by Nazis

1914 – Germany invades Belgium. In response, the United Kingdom declares war on Germany. The United States declares its neutrality.

1892 – Sunday school teacher Lizzie Borden arrested in Fall River, Mass

1862 – U.S. government collects its 1st income tax

1855 – John Bartlett publishes “Familiar Quotations”

1821 – 1st edition of Saturday Evening Post (publishes until 1969)

1693 – Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon’s invention of Champagne.

Births:

1792 – Percy Bysshe Shelly, English poet and author.

1901 – Louis Armstrong, American jazz musician (d. 1971)

1912 – Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat credited with saving nearly 100,000 Budapest Jews during World War II.

1920 – Helen Thomas, American journalist—Thomas has covered every president since John F. Kennedy. She was the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents Association, and, in 1975, the first female member of the Gridiron Club.

1944 – Richard Belzer, American actor and comedian (Sgt. Munch)

1955 – Billy Bob Thornton, American actor and writer

1961 – Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States

1962 – Roger Clemens, American baseball player

1962 – Wesley Snipes, Orlando Fla, actor (New Jack City, Passenger 57

Ernie Pyle was born on this date in 1900. Until he was killed by enemy machine-gun fire in April 1945, Pyle “blogged” World War II for millions of Americans.

Perhaps Pyle’s most famous piece: The Death of Captain Waskow. If you’ve never read it, do so now! If you’ve read it before, read it again!

From The New York Times obituary.

Ernie Pyle was haunted all his life by an obsession. He said over and over again, “I suffer agony in anticipation of meeting people for fear they won’t like me.”

No man could have been less justified in such a fear. Word of Pyle’s death started tears in the eyes of millions, from the White House to the poorest dwellings in the country.

President Truman and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt followed his writings as avidly as any farmer’s wife or city tenement mother with sons in service.

Mrs. Roosevelt once wrote in her column “I have read everything he has sent from overseas,” and recommended his writings to all Americans.

For three years these writings had entered some 14,000,000 homes almost as personal letters from the front. Soldiers’ kin prayed for Ernie Pyle as they prayed for their own sons.

NewMexiKen has before posted this quote from Pyle, but why not do so again on his birthday, and because there’s no place like home.

Yes, there are lots of nice places in the world. I could live with considerable pleasure in the Pacific Northwest, or in New England, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, or in Key West or California or Honolulu. But there is only one of me, and I can’t live in all those places. So if we can have only one house — and that’s all we want — then it has to be in New Mexico, and preferably right at the edge of Albuquerque where it is now. Ernie Pyle, January 1942

Pyle’s home on Girard SE is now a branch of the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library System.

Today is also the birthday

… of author P.D. James. Phyllis Dorothy James is 89.

… of Tony Bennett. He’s 83.

… of Martin Sheen, 69. Sheen won one Golden Globe for West Wing, but no Emmys. He did win an Emmy once for a guest role on Murphy Brown.

… of Martha Stewart, 68.

… of hockey hall-of-famer Marcel Dionne and of Jay North (TV’s Dennis the Menace). They’re 58 each.

… of Randy Scruggs, 56.

… of quarterback Tom Brady, 32.

Other than J.K. Rowling mentioned in a previous post, there aren’t many well-known individuals born on the last day of July. Oh sure, Wesley Snipes is 47 and Geraldine Chaplin is 65. The governor of Massachusetts is 53. (Quick now, what is his name?) S.S. Kresge was born on this date in 1867. Wonder what he’d think of K-Mart today?

No, I guess we’ll just have to make today a national holiday to celebrate Nora’s birthday. Generous, gracious, attractive, intelligent, educated, accomplished. Sounds like holiday material to me (even if I am biased in favor of a daughter-in-law).

Oh, and a secret, Nora’s birthday today is a round year.

Edd “Kookie Kookie lend me your comb” Byrnes is 76 today.

Blues guitarist Buddy Guy is 73.

Oscar nominee (direction and co-writer, The Last Picture Show) Peter Bogdanovich is 70.

Paul Anka is 68. Anka is not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is 62.

Kate Bush is 51.

Oscar best actor nominee Laurence Fishburne is 48.

Lisa Kudrow is 46.

Two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank is 35.

The Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengel was born on this date in 1890.

MANAGED NEW YORK YANKEES 1949-1960.
WON 10 PENNANTS AND 7 WORLD SERIES WITH
NEW YORK YANKEES. ONLY MANAGER TO WIN
5 CONSECUTIVE WORLD SERIES 1949-1953.
PLAYED OUTFIELD 1912-1925 WITH BROOKLYN,
PITTSBURGH, PHILADELPHIA, NEW YORK AND
BOSTON N.L. TEAMS. MANAGED BROOKLYN
1934-1936, BOSTON BRAVES 1938-1943,
NEW YORK METS 1962-1965.

A few Casey-isms:

“Can’t anybody here play this game?”

“Good pitching will always stop good hitting and vice-versa.”

“He’d (Yogi Berra) fall in a sewer and come up with a gold watch.”

One of the most remarkable Americans, Henry Ford, was born on this date in 1863. The following is an excerpt from Mr. Ford’s New York Times obituary in 1947:

Renting a one-story brick shed in Detroit, Mr. Ford spent the year 1902 experimenting with two- cylinder and four-cylinder motors. By that time the public had become interested in the speed possibilities of the automobile, which was no longer regarded as a freak. To capitalize on this interest, he built two racing cars, the “999” and the “Arrow,” each with a four-cylinder engine developing eighty horsepower. The “999,” with the celebrated Barney Oldfield at its wheel, won every race in which it was entered.

The resulting publicity helped Mr. Ford to organize the Ford Motor Company, which was capitalized at $100,000, although actually only $28,000 in stock was subscribed. From the beginning Mr. Ford held majority control of this company. In 1919 he and his son, Edsel, became its sole owners, when they bought out the minority stockholders for $70,000,000.

In 1903 the Ford Motor Company sold 1,708 two-cylinder, eight horsepower automobiles. …

With this material he began the new era of mass production. He concentrated on a single type of chassis, the celebrated Model T, and specified that “any customer can have a car painted any color he wants, so long as it is black.” On Oct. 1, 1908, he began the production of Model T, which sold for $850. The next year he sold 10,600 cars of this model. Cheap and reliable, the car had a tremendous success. In seven years he built and sold 1,000,000 Fords; by 1925 he was producing them at the rate of almost 2,000,000 a year.

He established two cardinal economic policies during this tremendous expansion: the continued cutting of the cost of the product as improved methods of production made it possible, and the payment of higher wages to his employes. By 1926 the cost of the Model T had been cut to $310, although it was vastly superior to the 1908 model. In January, 1914, he established a minimum pay rate of $5 a day for an eight-hour day, thereby creating a national sensation. Up to that time the average wage throughout his works had been $2.40 a nine-hour day.

The entire obituary is really rather fascinating reading.

Douglas Brinkley’s Wheels for the World (2003) is considered a good biography of Ford and the Ford Motor Company.

Vladimir Zworykin was born in Murom, Russia, on this date in 1889. He came to the U.S. in 1919. Zworykin’s television transmitting and receiving method using cathode ray tubes, developed in the 1920s and early 1930s, ranks him as the prime inventor of television.

Don Carter is 83 today.

Jackie Kennedy would have been 80 today. She was born Jacqueline Lee Bouvier on this date in 1929.

Bill Bradley is 66.

Sally Struthers and Georgia Engel are each 61 today.

Hugo Chávez, the President of Venezuela, is 55. Venezuela supplies about 6% of U.S. daily oil consumption.

Catherine Howard married Henry VIII on this date in 1540. She was Mrs. VIII number five.

Maximilien Robespierre got nicked with a razor on this date in 1794. Witnesses said Robespierre died within seconds of the guillotine blade severing his head from his neck but, after viewing A Tale of Two Cities, Dr. Senator Bill Frist was certain guillotine victims “respond to visual stimuli.”

Beatrix Potter was born on this date in 1866.

Beatrix Potter thought she might become a scientist, but when she wrote a paper to present to the Royal Botanic Gardens, she was turned away because only men were allowed to present. So she continued to make detailed drawings of animals and plants, and she continued to refuse the suitors her parents brought home for her, because she didn’t want to be a Victorian housewife and raise children and have no time left for her own interests.

In 1893, Potter sent an illustrated letter to the child of her former governess, and it was in that letter that Peter Rabbit made his debut. She liked creating animal characters, writing and illustrating their stories. So she decided to write children’s books, but for years publishers didn’t take her seriously.

You’ll have to read the rest at The Writer’s Almanac (2008).

An earthquake in China killed an estimated 242,000 people 33 years ago today.

Today is the birthday

… of television producer Norman Lear. He’s 87. Lear brought a revolution to TV when he introduced All in the Family in 1971. Sanford and Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons, Maude, One Day At a Time and other shows were also his.

… of Jerry Van Dyke, 78.

… of Bugs Bunny, who made his first featured appearance in a cartoon released on this date in 1940, A Wild Hare. Bugs was modeled on Groucho Marx with a carrot instead of a cigar — and with a Brooklyn accent.

… of Bobbie Gentry; she is 65. No word yet on what it was she and Billy Joe threw off the Tallahatchee bridge.

… of Peggy Fleming, 61 today. Miss Fleming won her gold medal for figure skating at the 1968 Winter Olympics.

… of Maya Rudolph, 37.

… of A-Rod. Alex Rodriguez is 34. He’s really younger because “A-Rod years” don’t have Octobers.

Baseball manager Leo Durocher was born 104 years ago today. His Hall-of-Fame bio reads:

Leo Durocher was a good-field, no-hit shortstop for 17 years, but gained his greatest notoriety for accomplishments after his playing days. His combative and swashbuckling style, brilliant baseball mind, uncanny memory and fiery disposition became “The Lip’s” trademarks as a colorful and controversial manager for 24 seasons with the Dodgers, Giants, Cubs and Astros. He compiled 2,009 wins in 3,740 games, captured three pennants and won the World Series in 1954. He was named Manager of the Year three times by the “Sporting News.”

The truce ending the Korean War was signed on this date in 1953. Read the report from The New York Times.

The first U.S. government agency, the Department of Foreign Affairs (which became the Department of State), was established on this date in 1789. State was my employer for 7½ years.

… of Bob Lilly. He’s 70. My god the years do go by.

… of Mick Jagger. He’s still can’t get no satisfaction, even at 66. And time isn’t really on his side so much any more, is it?

… of Oscar-winner Helen Mirren, 64.

… of Dorothy Hamill, 53. Another that makes one wonder where the years have gone. Her gold medal was at the 1976 Winter Olympics.

… of two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey. He’s 50. Spacey won for best supporting actor for The Usual Suspects and leading actor for American Beauty.

… of Sandra Bullock. From Arlington, Virginia, she’s 45. Ms. Bullock has been an Academy Award presenter.

Two great comediennes were born on this date — Gracie Allen in 1895, 1897 or 1902 (her birth certificate was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake) and Vivian Vance in 1909.

Because George Burns lived to be 100 and managed to stay in show business nearly until then (playing God in one film, no less), Gracie, who died in 1964 has been largely forgotten. She was the true comedic talent of the two, however. On their radio and television programs George was the straight man, Gracie had the good lines.

At the end of their show, George Burns would say, “Say goodnight, Gracie.” Urban myth has it that she said, “Good night Gracie,” but, in fact, she always just said “Goodnight.”

“Were you the oldest one in the family?” “No, no, my mother and father were much older.” — Gracie Allen

“They laughed at Joan of Arc, but she went right ahead and built it.” — Gracie Allen

“When I was born I was so surprised I didn’t talk for a year and a half.” — Gracie Allen

Vivian Vance was two years older than her long-time co-star Lucille Ball, though many thought Vance to be much older because her I Love Lucy character Ethel Mertz was married to Fred, played by actor William Frawley, who was 18 years older. Miss Vance died of cancer in 1979.

Actor Jason Robards was born on this date in 1922. Robards won two best supporting actor Oscars and was nominated a third time. NewMexiKen liked Robards in A Thousand Clowns, but Martin Balsam got the acting Oscar for that fine film.

Humorist Jean Shepherd was born on this date in 1925. As they so often do, The Writer’s Almanac had a nice, succinct essay (from 2004):

It’s the birthday of humorist Jean Shepherd, born in Chicago, Illinois (1925). He’s remembered for the autobiographical stories he told on the radio about a boy named Ralph Parker growing up in Hohman, Indiana. One of his stories was made into the movie A Christmas Story (1983), which he narrated. It’s about a boy who wants a BB gun for Christmas, even though every adult in his life says that he’ll shoot his eye out. The stories Shepherd told on-air were always improvised, but he later wrote them down and published them in collections like In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash (1967) and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters (1972).

Shepherd said, “Some men are Baptists, others Catholics. My father was an Oldsmobile man.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856), Carl Jung (1875) and Aldous Huxley (1894) were born on July 26th.

Daniel Radcliffe is 20 today.

At the other end of the acting spectrum, Gloria DeHaven is 84.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is 73. Kennedy, a Reagan appointment, is often the swing vote on the Court. Stevens (89), Ginsburg (76) and Scalia (73) are older; Breyer will be 71 next month.

Actor Ronny Cox is 71. Cox, a Cloudcroft, New Mexico native, is perhaps most famous as Lt. Andrew Bogomil of the Beverly Hills Police Department, but he has more than 120 credits listed at IMDB.

Don Imus is 69 today.

Woody Harrelson is 48. Harrelson was nominated for best actor for The People vs. Larry Flynt and won one Emmy for playing Woody on Cheers.

Saul Hudson is 44. He’s better known as Slash of Guns N’ Roses.

Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman is 42.

Alison Krauss is 38.

Bob Dole is 86 today.

Oscar-winning actress Louise Fletcher, Nurse Ratched, is 75.

Tom Robbins is 73 today.

He’s known for novels such as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994), and Villa Incognito (2003). He says that when he starts a book, he has no idea of what the story will be. He never outlines and never revises. He just works on each sentence until he thinks it’s perfect, sometimes for more than an hour, and then he moves on to the next one. He said, “I’m probably more interested in sentences than anything else in life.”

The Writer’s Almanac

69. How old is Jeopardy host Alex Trebek today?

One-time supporting actor Oscar nominee Albert Brooks, Danny Glover and The Eagles Don Henley all turn 62 today

Two-time Oscar nominee for best actor Willem Dafoe, aka the Green Goblin, aka Jesus, is 54.

David Spade is 45.

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on July 22nd in 1890. She lived until January 22, 1995. According to The Writer’s Almanac:

There’s a cocktail named after her and it’s popular in bars on the East Coast (order a “Rose Kennedy”). It has vodka, club soda, and a splash of cranberry juice — which gives it a “rose” color. It’s served with a wedge of lemon or lime and is especially popular at gay bars, reportedly, because it’s low in calories.

It’s the birthday

… of Janet Reno, the first woman attorney general of the United States. She is 71.

… of actor Edward Herrmann. He is 66.

… of actor Wendell Burton, 62. Burton was Liza Minnelli’s boyfriend in The Sterile Cuckoo.

… of Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau. He’s 61.

… of Yusuf Islam, also 61. He was born Steven Demetre Georgiou. Much of his life he was known as Cat Stevens and he sold 60 million albums. Stevens wrote “The First Cut is the Deepest,” a hit for four artists, most recently Sheryl Crow. In 2006, he returned to music after nearly 30 years; his new stage name is Yusuf.

… of Mork. Robin Williams is 58. Williams has been nominated for the best actor Oscar three times without winning. He did win the best supporting actor Oscar for Good Will Hunting.

… of Jon Lovitz. He’s 52. Fresh!

… of Brandi Chastain. She’s 41.

… and of C.C. Sabathia, 29.

Ernest Hemingway was born on this date in 1899. He died a few weeks before his 62nd birthday in 1961. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.” The New York Times has an extraordinary wealth of reviews, articles, interviews and other material collected on Hemingway.

Marshall McLuhan was born on this date in 1911.

… was born in Autlan de Navarro, Mexico, 62 years ago today. His family migrated to the U.S. in the 1960s.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame introduces inductee Santana this way —

Guitarist Carlos Santana is one of rock’s true virtuosos and guiding lights. Since 1966, he has led the group that bears his surname, selling over 30 million albums and performing before 13 million people. Though numerous musicians have passed through Santana’s ranks, the continuing presence of Carlos Santana at the helm has insured high standards. From the earliest days, when Santana first overlaid Afro-Latin rhythms upon a base of driving blues-rock, they have been musical sorcerers. The melodic fluency and kineticism of Santana’s guitar solos and the piercing, sustained tone that is his signature have made him one of rock’s standout instrumentalists. Coupled with the polyrhythmic fury of drums, congas and timbales, the sound of Santana in full flight is singularly exciting. Underlying it all is Santana’s belief that music should “create a bridge so people can have more trust and hope in humanity.”

This was just three years ago.

Chancellor Merkel is 55 today.

Fifties TV host Art Linkletter is 97 today. He’s the one that said “kids say the darndest things” and had a panel of them on many of his shows to prove it.

Phyllis Diller is 92 today. Before she became a kind of parody of herself she was actually very, very funny.

Diahann Carroll , the first African-American actress to appear in a TV series and not portray a domestic worker, is 74 today. The show was Julia and she was a nurse and single mom. Ms. Carroll was nominated for a best actress Oscar for Claudine in 1975.

Kiefer’s dad Donald is 74 today. Donald Sutherland’s breakthrough role was as Vernon Pinkley in The Dirty Dozen, then as “Hawkeye” Pierce in M*A*S*H. He has more than 150 credits listed at IMDb.

Spencer Davis is 67.

Camilla is 61.

Lucie Arnaz is 58.

David Hasselhoff is 57.

And one of my favorites, Andre Royo, “Bubbles,” is 41 today.

Elbridge Gerry was born on this date in 1744. He signed the Declaration of Independence, the Article of Confederation, but was one of three delegates who did not sign the Constitution, in Gerry’s case because it did not include a Bill of Rights. Gerry was the fifth U.S. vice president, serving the first year-and-a-half under Madison’s second term before dying. And, of course, he is the person for whom gerrymandering is named. He was the Massachusetts governor who signed a particularly egregious redistricting plan in 1812.

Today is the birthday

… of Clive Cussler, 78.

… of Alex Karras, All-American, Heisman runner-up (and he was a lineman), Outland Award winner, NFL star (1958-1971), Monday Night Football sportscaster, TV sitcom actor and — most notably — Mongo in Blazing Saddles. He’s 74 today.

… of Tucson’s favorite daughter, Linda Ronstadt, 63 today. Miss Ronstadt has sold more than 66 million albums worldwide. The session band behind her on her third album became The Eagles. Linda went to a different high school and was behind me a year or two, but I did sit behind her cousin in many a class when the nuns had us in alphabetical order.

… of Arianna Stassinopoulos, 59. Born in Greece, educated at Cambridge, wealthy by her marriage to Michael Huffington, she is an actress, commentator, author of a dozen books, re-born liberal and founder of the Huffington Post.

… of Forest Whitaker, 48. Whitaker has been in more than 60 films and television productions, most notably Good Morning, Vietnam, The Crying Game and as Charlie “Bird” Parker in Bird (which earned him best actor at Cannes). He won the best actor Oscar, of course, for portraying Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.

Rembrandt Van Rijn was born in Leiden, Netherlands on this date in 1606.

Today is the birthday

… of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Patrick Stewart is 69.

… of Bob Falfa. That’s Harrison Ford. He’s 67. And yes, Ford, who at one time had been in seven of the ten top grossing films of all time, has an Oscar nomination — for best actor in Witness.

… of Roger McGuinn, an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Byrds. He’s 67.

As Roger McGuinn once said of the Byrds, “It was Dylan meets the Beatles.” The Byrds combined the upbeat, melodic pop of the Beatles with the message-oriented lyrics of Bob Dylan into a wholly original amalgam that would be branded folk-rock. If only for their harmony-rich versions of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” drenched in the 12-string jangle of McGuinn’s Rickenbacker guitar, the Byrds would have earned their place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Yet the group continually broke ground during the Sixties, creating revelatory syntheses of sound that were given such hyphenated names as space-rock (“5D [Fifth Dimension]”), psychedelic-rock (“Eight Miles High”) and country-rock (their Sweethearts of the Rodeo album). At a time when rock and roll was exploding in all fronts, the Byrds led the way with an insatiable curiosity about the forms and directions pop music could take. In so doing, they became peers and equals of their mentors, Dylan and the Beatles.

… of Pedro de Pacas. Richard ‘Cheech’ Marin is 63.

Jake LaMotta, the boxer portrayed by Robert De Niro in Raging Bull, is 88 today.

Alice Munro is 78.

She has written 11 books of short stories, and a new collection, Too Much Happiness, which comes out later this year. In May, Alice Munro won the Man Booker International Prize.

She said: “It’s not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, ‘Read,’ but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, ‘Don’t read, don’t think, just write,’ and the result could be a mountain of drivel. If you’re going to be a writer you’ll probably take a lot of wrong turns and then one day just end up writing something you have to write, then getting it better and better just because you want it to be better, and even when you get old and think ‘There must be something else people do,’ you won’t quite be able to quit.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Lolita, the actress Sue Lyon, is 63 today.

Arlo Guthrie is 62.

Bela Fleck is 51.

Adrian Grenier is 33 today.

Jessica Simpson is 29.

Arthur Ashe, the first black man to win a major tennis championship, was born on this date in 1943. Ashe won Wimbledon, the U.S. and Australian Opens. He died from pneumonia, a complication of AIDS, in 1993. He contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion during surgery (not altogether uncommon before the disease was understood).

Marcel Proust was born on July 10th in 1871. His fame is based on the novel The Remembrance of Things Past — À la recherche du temps perdu is actually better translated In Search of Lost Time and that has become in recent years the more common title. Jane Smiley belongs to that tiny group that has read the entire 3,000-page work — she wrote about her experience for Salon in 2005. A brief excerpt from her story:

[I]t is time for you to begin, because reading all of Proust is not hard.

First, you buy all seven volumes in a uniform edition — mine came in a six-book set — and you arrange them in a row next to your bed, the bathtub or your favorite chair, wherever you are most comfortable reading. For a few days, let’s say no longer than a week, you glance at them from time to time and pick them up and look at the covers. You can even flip the pages — but don’t read anything. You are familiarizing yourself with this new acquaintance. You are coming to recognize his appeal. You are letting him impose upon you, because for the next 70 days or so, you are going to organize your free time around him.

Ed Ames, the singer and actor, is 82. Ames, whose parents were Ukrainian Jews, played the Indian Mingo on “Daniel Boone.” He was responsible for the classic incident with Johnny Carson throwing a tomahawk. Ames threw at a two-dimensional silhouette and managed to add some three-dimensional anatomy. Ed, with his brothers Joe, Gene and Vic — the Ames Brothers — had several top hits in the early 1950s. Their actual surname was Urick.

Donald Rumsfeld is 77.

Doctor and author Oliver Sacks is 76 today.

He has devoted his career to studying people with unusual neurological disorders, and writing about them so that they seem like real people and not just case studies. His first book was Migraine (1970), about migraine headaches, and it got good reviews. In the 1960s, he started working with survivors of the sleeping sickness epidemic that occurred between 1916 and 1927. These people had been in institutions ever since, still alive but in unresponsive bodies. Sacks noticed that many people had similar reactions as people suffering from Parkinson’s disease, so he decided to treat them with the drug levodopa. Many of them woke up and were cognizant for the first time in 40 years. But it was extremely stressful for many of them to have lost so much time like that, and most of them went back to sleep. Sacks wrote a book about it, Awakenings (1973). In 1990, it was made into a movie starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.

He went on to write several more books in the same vein, including Seeing Voices (1989), The Island of the Colorblind (1997), and the best-selling book of essays The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985), about people living with a variety of neurological disorders. His most recent book is Musicophilia (2007), about the sometimes bizarre connections between music and the brain, and the ways in which music operates on everyone from people with severe neurological disorders to ordinary people who can’t get a tune out of their heads.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Brian Dennehy is 71 — guess he’ll be playing one of the old folks in any re-make of Cocoon. Dennehy won a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild award for his portrayal of Willy Loman in the 2000 made-for-TV presentation of Death of a Salesman.

Chris Cooper is 58. Cooper has appeared in over 50 films and television productions, winning a best supporting actor Oscar for Adaptation.

Jimmy Smits is 54. Smits was nominated six times for an Emmy for supporting actor for L.A. Law. He won once. He was nominated five times for best actor for NYPD Blue. No nominations for his work as Senator Bail Organa in Star Wars. But then, he was elected President on West Wing.

Tom Hanks is 53 today. Hanks has been nominated for the Academy Award for best actor five times, winning for Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994). His other nominations were for Big, Saving Private Ryan and Cast Away.

Kelly McGillis is 52, Courtney Love is 45, and Fred Savage is 33.

And Orenthal James Simpson is 62 today.

… of Anjelica Huston. The third generation Oscar winner is 58. Anjelica won the best supporting actress Oscar for Prizzi’s Honor; she has two other nominations. Her father John was nominated for 15 writing, directing or acting Oscars, winning director and writing for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Grandfather Walter was nominated four times for acting Oscars, winning the supporting award for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

… of journalist and author Anna Quindlen, 56.

… of Kevin Bacon. He’s 51. And no, Kevin Bacon has never been nominated for an Oscar. He’s only a few degrees of separation however, from many who have.

Steve Lawrence is 74 and Jerry Vale is 77. Or vice versa.

Jeffrey Tambor is 65. Toby Keith is 48 (I like that bar too, Toby). Joan Osborne is 47. Billy Crudup is 41.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, was born in Zurich, Switzerland on this date in 1926. The Writer’s Almanac informed us in 2007:

She was the first medical professional to argue that dying is a natural process, and that patients who are terminally ill should not be forced to fight the dying process every step of the way. …

Her book On Death and Dying (1969) helped start the hospice movement, which has since spread around the world. She also introduced the now-famous concept of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Louis Jordan was born on this date in 1908.

“In the Forties, bandleader Louis Jordan pioneered a wild – and wildly popular – amalgam of jazz and blues with salty, jive-talking humor. The music played by singer/saxophonist Jordan and his Tympany Five got called “jump blues” or “jumpin’ jive,” and it served as a precursor to the rhythm & blues and rock and roll of the Fifties.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

John D. Rockefeller was born on this date in 1839. The world’s first billionaire, Rockefeller essentially retired from Standard Oil in 1911. Even so, his taxable income in 1918 was $33,000,000 and his personal worth was estimated at more than $800,000,000. By then, he had already donated about $500 million to charitable causes. Rockefeller died in 1937 at age 97. Ron Chernow has written a recent highly-regarded biography, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.. The New York Times has posted Rockefeller’s obituary.

Nelson Rockefeller, grandson of John D., was born on his grandfather’s birthday in 1908. Rockefeller was governor of New York 1959-1973 and vice president 1974-1977. He died in 1979. NewMexiKen once attended a conference hosted by Rockefeller and saw him stirring his coffee with the temple of his eyeglasses. It was kind of endearing.

… of former President George W. Bush, 63 today.

… of Sylvester Enzio Stallone, also 63 today. Stallone is one of three people to be nominated for a writing Oscar and an acting Oscar for the same movie. The others are Chaplin and Welles.

… of Nancy Reagan (88) and William Schallert, Patty Duke’s TV father, (87).

… of Ned Beatty. Beatty, who is 72 today, was nominated for the supporting actor Oscar for Network.

Bill Haley (“Rock Around the Clock”) was born on this date in 1925; he died in 1981.

The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was born on this date in 1907 [she claimed 1910]. Ms. Kahlo died in 1954. The following is from the obituary in The New York Times when Ms. Kahlo died in 1954:

Frida Kahlo, wife of Diego Rivera, the noted painter, was found dead in her home today. Her age was 44. She had been suffering from cancer for several years.

She also was a painter and also had been active in leftist causes. She made her last public appearance in a wheel chair at a meeting here in support of the now ousted regime of Communist- backed President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman of Guatemala.

Frida Kahlo began painting in 1926 while obliged to lie in bed during convalescence from injuries suffered in a bus accident. Not long afterward she showed her work to Diego Rivera, who advised, “go on painting.” They were married in 1929, began living apart in 1939, were reunited in 1941.

Usually classed as a surrealist, the artist had no special explanation for her methods. She said only: “I put on the canvas whatever comes into my mind.” She gave one-woman shows in Mexico City, New York and elsewhere, and is said to have been the first woman artist to sell a picture to the Louvre.

Some of her pictures shocked beholders. One showed her with her hands cut off, a huge bleeding heart on the ground nearby, and on either side of her an empty dress. This was supposed to reveal how she felt when her husband went off alone on a trip. Another self-portrait presented the artist as a wounded deer, still carrying the shafts of nine arrows.