Individuals born on this date with an emphasis on American history and culture, including pop culture.
Mary Cassatt was born on May 22nd in 1844.
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was a unique artist because she was a woman who succeeded in what was in the nineteenth century a predominantly male profession, because she was the only American invited to exhibit with a group of independent artists later known as the Impressionists, and because she responded in a very distinctive way to their mandate to portray modern life.
Click images for larger version and to learn more.
Al Franken is 58. Mr. T is 57. Judge Reinhold is 52.
Leo Sayer is 61. I wonder if he feels like dancing.
Thomas “Fats” Waller was born on this date in 1904. His most famous composition was “Ain’t Misbehavin'”
James Stewart was born 101 years ago today. Stewart received five best actor Oscar nominations in his long career, but won only for The Philadelphia Story in 1941.
Joe Cocker is 65. Timothy Olyphant is scowling at being 41.
Cher is 63.
Dolley Madison was born on May 20th in 1768.
Charles Lindbergh departed Long Island for Paris 82 years ago today.
Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland for Ireland on May 20th in 1932, the first woman to solo the Atlantic.
President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862. The act provided settlers with 160 acres of surveyed public land after payment of a filing fee and five years of continuous residence. Designed to spur Western migration, the Homestead Act culminated a twenty-year battle to distribute public lands to citizens willing to farm. Concerned that free land would lower property values and reduce the cheap labor supply, Northern businessmen opposed the act. Unlikely allies, Southerners feared homesteaders would add their voices to the call for abolition of slavery. With Southerners out of the picture in 1862, the legislation finally passed.
The National Park Service provides some additional background.
People interested in Homesteading first had to file their intentions at the nearest Land Office. A brief check for previous ownership claims was made for the plot of land in question, usually described by its survey coordinates. The prospective homesteader paid a filing fee of $10 to claim the land temporarily, as well as a $2 commission to the land agent.
With application and receipt in hand, the homesteader then returned to the land to begin the process of building a home and farming the land, both requirements for “proving” up at the end of five years. When all requirements had been completed and the homesteader was ready the take legal possession, the homesteader found two neighbors or friends willing to vouch for the truth of his or her statements about the land’s improvements and sign the “proof” document.
After successful completion of this final form and payment of a $6 fee, the homesteader received the patent for the land, signed with the name of the current President of the United States. This paper was often proudly displayed on a cabin wall and represented the culmination of hard work and determination.
Best of all, Avelino Maestas was born on May 20. The possibility of a future national holiday is up to you, Ave.
Former U.S. Senator Pete Domenici is 77 today.
Tim Russert would have been 59.
Johannes Brahms and Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky were born on May 7th in 1833 and 1840 respectively.
Poet, playwright and Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish was born on May 7th in 1892.
Gary Cooper was born on May 7th in 1901. Copper twice won the best actor Oscar and had three more nominations in the category. His wins were for Sergeant York and High Noon.
Edwin Herbert Land was born on May 7th in 1909. Land invented the Polaroid Land Camera.
And Eva Peron was born on May 7th in 1919.
In addition to A.P. Giannini, mentioned in the previous post, today is the birthday of Willie Mays (78), Bob Seger (64) and George Clooney (48). Orson Welles was born on May 6th (1915). So was Rudolph Valentino (1895), Sigmund Freud (1856), Robert Peary (1856) and Maximilien Robespierre (1758).
And so was my eponymous oldest son.
Greatness abounds.
You know that the Bank of America is in the news today for being in need of $34 billion in shoring up.
Today also is the birthday of the Bank’s founder, Amadeo Pietro Giannini (1870-1949), a hero of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Like a lot of folks in the San Francisco area, Amadeo Peter Giannini was thrown from his bed in the wee hours of April 18, 1906, when the Great Quake shook parts of the city to rubble. He hurriedly dressed and hitched a team of horses to a borrowed produce wagon and headed into town — to the Bank of Italy, which he had founded two years earlier. Sifting through the ruins, he discreetly loaded $2 million in gold, coins and securities onto the wagon bed, covered the bank’s resources with a layer of vegetables and headed home.
In the days after the disaster, the man known as A.P. broke ranks with his fellow bankers, many of whom wanted area banks to remain shut to sort out the damage. Giannini quickly set up shop on the docks near San Francisco’s North Beach. With a wooden plank straddling two barrels for a desk, he began to extend credit “on a face and a signature” to small businesses and individuals in need of money to rebuild their lives. His actions spurred the city’s redevelopment.
That would have been legacy enough for most people. But Giannini’s mark extends far beyond San Francisco, where his dogged determination and unusual focus on “the little people” helped build what was at his death the largest bank in the country, Bank of America . . .
Most bank customers today take for granted the things Giannini pioneered, including home mortgages, auto loans and other installment credit. Heck, most of us take banks for granted. But they didn’t exist, at least not for working stiffs, until Giannini came along.
Dick Dale, The King of the Surf Guitar, is 72 today. Let’s go trippin’.
Dick Dale wasn’t nicknamed “King of the Surf Guitar” for nothing: he pretty much invented the style single-handedly, and no matter who copied or expanded upon his blueprint, he remained the fieriest, most technically gifted musician the genre ever produced. Dale’s pioneering use of Middle Eastern and Eastern European melodies (learned organically through his familial heritage) was among the first in any genre of American popular music, and predated the teaching of such “exotic” scales in guitar-shredder academies by two decades. The breakneck speed of his single-note staccato picking technique was unrivalled until it entered the repertoires of metal virtuosos like Eddie Van Halen, and his wild showmanship made an enormous impression on the young Jimi Hendrix. But those aren’t the only reasons Dale was once called the father of heavy metal. Working closely with the Fender company, Dale continually pushed the limits of electric amplification technology, helping to develop new equipment that was capable of producing the thick, clearly defined tones he heard in his head, at the previously undreamed-of volumes he demanded. He also pioneered the use of portable reverb effects, creating a signature sonic texture for surf instrumentals. And, if all that weren’t enough, Dale managed to redefine his instrument while essentially playing it upside-down and backwards — he switched sides in order to play left-handed, but without re-stringing it (as Hendrix later did).
It’s Dale and “Misirlou” behind the credits at the beginning of Pulp Fiction.
Academy Award nominee Richard Jenkins is 62. The Visitor, if you haven’t seen it, do so.
Randy Travis is 50, forever and ever, amen.
George Will is 68 today, so come to think of it, having a holiday today would be too much like being a teenager and going to the beach with your parents.
Audrey Hepburn would have been 80 today. (She died in 1993.) Ms. Hepburn was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role five times, winning the first time for Roman Holiday in 1954. (The other nominations were for Sabrina, The Nun’s Story, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Wait Until Dark.) She also received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, posthumously in 1993. Hersholt had presented the Oscar to Hepburn in 1954.
Audrey Kathleen Hepburn-Ruston was born in Brussels, Belgium, daughter of John Victor Hepburn-Ruston, an English banker, and Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch baroness. In 1963, it was Audrey Hepburn who sang “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy. Marilyn Monroe sang to him the year before.
Today is the birthday
… of Chuck Bednarik, 84. The hall-of-famer played for the Eagles. Bednarik is the last NFL player who routinely played both offense (center) and defense (linebacker). Bednarik’s most famous play was a tackle of Frank Gifford that put Gifford out of action for a year-and-a-half (and ultimately shortened his career).
… of singer Sonny James, 80. James’s big hit was “Young Love” in 1956.
… of the amazingly graceful Judy Collins. She is 70 today.
… of Rita Coolidge, 64. Some say Coolidge is the reason for the 1970 dissolution of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, when she left Stills for Nash, but it was Kris Kristofferson she married in 1973. Miss Coolidge is part Cherokee.
… of Dann Florek of “Law and Order.” Florek is 58.
… of Tim McGraw. Tug McGraw’s boy is 42.
Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22, was born on May 1st in 1923. Heller died in 1999.
And God Bless Kate Smith, born 102 years ago today.
It’s Willie Nelson’s birthday. He’s 76.
He is an American icon; his voice as comforting as the American landscape, his songs as familiar as the color of the sky, his face as worn as the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps that’s why Dan Rather suggested, “We should add his face to the cliffs of Mt. Rushmore and be done with it.”
He’s recorded 250 albums, written 2,500 songs, and for half a century played countless concerts across America and around the world. He’s been instrumental in shaping both country and pop music, yet his appeal crosses all social and economic lines. Sometimes he’s called an outlaw, though from Farm Aid to the aftermath of September 11, from the resurrection of a burned-out courthouse in his own hometown to fanning the flame of the Olympics, it is Willie Nelson who brings us together.
Perhaps Emmylou Harris said it best: “If America could sing with one voice, it would be Willie’s.”
Not only that, but Cloris Leachman is 83 and Kirsten Dunst is 27.
All that and you are at work, why?
Furthermore . . .
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 had begun on March 4th, but he’d booked flights on JetBlue and didn’t get from Virginia to New York City—then the capital—until the end of April.
Louisiana entered the union as the 18th state on this date in 1812.
Edward Kennedy Ellington, that is, Duke Ellington, was born in Washington, D.C., on this date in 1899. The PBS web site for JAZZ A Film By Ken Burns sums up Ellington succinctly.
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was the most prolific composer of the twentieth century in terms of both number of compositions and variety of forms. His development was one of the most spectacular in the history of music, underscored by more than fifty years of sustained achievement as an artist and an entertainer. He is considered by many to be America’s greatest composer, bandleader, and recording artist.
The extent of Ellington’s innovations helped to redefine the various forms in which he worked. He synthesized many of the elements of American music — the minstrel song, ragtime, Tin Pan Alley tunes, the blues, and American appropriations of the European music tradition — into a consistent style with which, though technically complex, has a directness and a simplicity of expression largely absent from the purported art music of the twentieth century. Ellington’s first great achievements came in the three-minute song form, and he later wrote music for all kinds of settings: the ballroom, the comedy stage, the nightclub, the movie house, the theater, the concert hall, and the cathedral. His blues writing resulted in new conceptions of form, harmony, and melody, and he became the master of the romantic ballad and created numerous works that featured the great soloists in his jazz orchestra.
The Today in History page from the Library of Congress has much about Ellington. The Red Hot Jazz Archive has a number of Ellington recordings on line [RealAudio files].
Today is also the birthday
… of Jerry Seinfeld. He’s 55.
… of four-time Oscar nominee, two-time winner Daniel Day-Lewis. He’s 52. Lewis won for My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown and for There Will Be Blood.
… of three-time Oscar nominee Michelle Pfeiffer. She’s 51. Once upon a time, before she gave it all up to go to Hollywood, Michelle was a checker at our local Von’s supermarket.
… of Jan Brady. Eve Plumb is 51.
… of one-time Oscar nominee (Pulp Fiction) Uma Thurman. She’s 39.
… of Andre Agassi, 39.
William Randolph Hearst was born on this date in 1863. His father, George Hearst, was 42, his mother Phoebe Apperson Hearst was 20. Was Hearst the model for Charles Foster Kane? Here is what Orson Welles had to say in 1975.
… then what’s the point of even having holidays?
Harper Lee. The author of one the great classics of American literature, To Kill A Mockingbird, is 83 today. Mockingbird, published in 1960, has sold more than 30 million copies.
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
The Writer’s Almanac had a nice essay about Lee three years ago (it includes the quotation above). There was another slightly longer variation of it four years ago that NewMexiKen replicated.
And, absolutely, you must read Garrison Keillor’s essay (ostensibly a book review).
Today is also the birthday
… of James A. Baker III. The former Secretary of State is 79. NewMexiKen met Baker in 1993 during the last week of the first Bush Administration. He was the President’s chief of staff, so the meeting took place in the West Wing (one of two times I’ve been there on business). Never have I met an individual more impressive in a small meeting than Baker. When you spoke, Baker gave you his apparent undivided attention. Baker’s place in history will be enhanced I believe by his diplomatic work in forming the international coalition before the 1991 invasion of Iraq. His place in history will be diminished I believe by his work for the second Bush in the 2000 Florida election litigation.
… of Ann-Margret, 68.
… of Jay Leno. He’s 59.
… of golfer John Daly. He’s 43.
… of Penélope Cruz Sánchez. Winner of several best actress awards in Europe for Non ti muovere, the Oscar-nominee for best actress last year is 35.
… of Jessica Alba. She’s 28.
Carolyn Jones was born on this date in 1929. The one-time Oscar nominee has nearly 100 credits to her name despite dying of colon cancer at age 54. She was, of course, Morticia Addams in the classic TV show.
Lionel Herbert Blythe was born on this date in 1878. We know him as Lionel Barrymore — and we know him even better as Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life — “I’d say you were nothing but a scurvy little spider.” Barrymore won the Oscar for best actor in 1931 for A Free Soul. The previous year he was nominated for best director. Both of Barrymore’s parents were actors, as were his sister Ethel (an Oscar winner) and brother John.
And James Monroe, the fifth U.S. President, was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on this date in 1758. He is one of three presidents (and two NewMexiKen daughters) to attend the College of William and Mary.
Hiram Ulysses Grant was born on this date in 1822.
In 1839, his Ohio congressman nominated him for the U.S. Military Academy, but mistakenly as Ulysses S. Grant. The cadet simply adopted the name. Because his new initials were U.S., the same as those of Uncle Sam, Grant was nicknamed Sam in the Army.
The name U.S. Grant took on a whole new meaning in 1862 however.
HEADQUARTERS ARMY IN THE FIELD
Camp near Fort Donelson
February 16, 1862.
General S. B. BUCKNER,
Confederate Army.SIR: Yours of this date, proposing armistice and appointment of commissioners to settle terms of capitulation, is just received. No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.
I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
U.S. GRANT,
Brigadier-General, Commanding.
From then the U.S. in U.S. Grant stood for Unconditional Surrender.
Walter Lantz was born 110 years ago today (1899). Lantz was the creator of such animated characters as Andy Panda, Chilly Willy, Wally Walrus and the greatest cartoon character of them all, Woody Woodpecker. Lantz was nominated for the Academy Award 10 times. He received the Academy’s Life-Time Achievement Award in 1979.
Click on the image above to visit The Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia for audio and video clips and lots of other goodies.
… was born on this date in 1886. Gertrude Pridgett began performing in 1900, singing and dancing in minstrel shows. In 1902, she married performer William “Pa” Rainey and became known as Ma Rainey.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum has this to say about inductee 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.
… was born on this date in 1938, which would make him 71 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” and I’m cruising Speedway Boulevard in Tucson all over again. Someone else is driving — I’m not that old — but nevertheless, little rock and roll is as evocative as Duane Eddy, dated as it seems now.
Blogging today is strictly in commemoration of
. . . Shirley MacLaine, five-time nominee for the Oscar for best actress — winning for Terms of Endearment in 1984 — was born Shirley MacLean Beaty in Richmond, Virginia 75 years ago today. She and brother Warren grew up in Arlington, Virginia.
. . . Barbra Streisand was born in Brooklyn 67 years ago today. Miss Streisand has been nominated for the best actress Oscar twice, winning for Funny Girl in 1969. She also shared the Oscar with Paul Williams for best original song in 1977 for A Star is Born.
Reportedly MacLaine and Streisand celebrate their birthday together each year.
Today’s blogging is strictly in commemoration of
… Shirley Temple Black. The actress turned diplomat is 81. Shirley Temple was in approximately 50 films before she turned 18. She received a special juvenile Oscar in 1935.
… Lee Majors. He’s 70. Soon the $6-million man will be found on eBay for $7.95 $6.95.
… Michael Moore, 55.
… Judy Davis. The two-time Oscar nominee is 54.
… Valerie Bertinelli. For 20 years, Mrs. Eddie Van Halen, she’s 49, but must feel older.
… George Lopez. He’s 48.
… Melina Kanakaredes, 42.
… Dev Patel. He’s 19. Do you know who he is?
It was on the date in 1791 that James Buchanan, the former worst president ever of the U.S., was born.
Stephen A. Douglas, the short guy who debated Lincoln during the 1858 election—and won the election — was born on this date in 1813. Douglas died shortly after Lincoln’s inaugural as president in 1861.
April 23, 1564, is generally accepted as the birth date of William Shakespeare.
And 52 years later, on April 23, 1616, both Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes died. One likes to think that had they been in heaven sooner, The Bible would have been better written.
Ron Howard’s brother is 50 today; a half-century.
One wonders how Ron Howard will spend this watershed day, having a younger brother turn 50. Surely Ron Howard’s family and friends will reach out to him to share the joy, and perhaps poignancy of having his brother attain this milestone.
Click here for a page listing a number of postings about Ron Howard’s brother.
… a bunch of stuff happened and a bunch of people were born but, frankly, none of it or them interest NewMexiKen much.
Other than maybe, the fact that Oscar-winner Rachel Weisz is 38 today.
Oh, and Jenna Fischer is 35.
Today is the birthday
… of Ed McMahon. Johnny’s sidekick is 86.
… of Alan Greenspan. He’s 83.
… of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 82.
. . . “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
His family wanted him to go to law school, and he gave it a try, but he hated it. After five years, he left without earning a degree. He worked as a reporter in Europe and Venezuela, and settled in Mexico City. For several years, he wrote no fiction. Then one day he was driving between Mexico City and Acapulco, and the whole first chapter of One Hundred Years of Solitude came to him. He went home and told his wife not to disturb him with any problems, and he spent the next 18 months writing, shut in a room for eight to 10 hours a day. His wife sold their car, pawned household appliances, and applied for loan after loan.
The first printing in 1967 sold out before the end of the week, and One Hundred Years of Solitude has now sold about 30 million copies. . . .
… of Mary Wilson. The Supreme who is neither Diana Ross nor the one Dream Girls is about is 65 today.
The members of the Supremes – Diana Ross, Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson – first came together in a quartet, the Primettes, that had been recruited by singer Paul Williams as a sister act to his locally popular Detroit group, the Primes (later known as the Temptations). After persistently showing up at Motown’s “Hitsville” headquarters after school, the Supremes were signed to the label in January 1961. The group was slow to find its footing, enduring several years of flop singles before finally clicking with “When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes” (#23) in early 1964. After that, it was off to the races for the Supremes, who amassed a dozen Number One hits between 1964-69. In addition to the aforementioned singles, the Supremes’ other chart-toppers were “I Hear a Symphony,” “You Can’t Hurry Love,” “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” “Love Is Here and Now You’re gone,” “The Happening,” “Love Child” and “Someday We’ll Be Together.”
… of Rob Reiner. “Meathead” is 62.
… of Shaquille O’Neal. He’s getting up there — 37.
Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on this date in 1475.
Detail from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on this date in 1806.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Bob Wills was born on this date in 1905.
You can see the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee,
It’s the home of country music, on that we all agree.
But when you cross that ole Red River, hoss,
that just don’t mean a thing,
‘Cause once you’re down in Texas,
Bob Wills is still the King.
(‘Bob Wills Is Still The King’ by Waylon Jennings)
Bob Wills was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1968 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.
It’s the birthday of novelist Leslie Marmon Silko, born in Albuquerque, New Mexico (1948). She grew up on a Pueblo reservation, where her community was made up of matrilineal families: Women owned the houses and the fields and were the authority figures, and men did much of the child rearing. Her first novel, Ceremony (1977), was one of the first novels ever published by a Native American woman, and many critics consider it a masterpiece.
The Writer’s Almanac (2007)
It’s also the birthday
… of Penn Jillette. Penn of Penn & Teller is 54.
… of Adriana Barraza. The 2007 supporting actress Oscar nominee is 53 today.
… of Kevin Connolly of Entourage. He’s 35.
Patsy Cline died in a plane crash on this date in 1963. She was 30. John Belushi was found dead from a drug overdose on this date in 1982. He was 33.
The Constitution went into effect 220 years ago today.
Legendary Notre Dame football player and coach Knute Rockne was born on March 4th in 1888. He died in a plane crash at age 43 in 1931.
Rockne always said that every play, if perfectly carried out, would go for a touchdown from wherever it was started. His last two teams usually started their scoring with long runs from scrimmage.
In coaching he tried always for perfection and spent hours in teaching the art of blocking. Simple plays, well executed, were his idea of the way to win football games. He had small use for any so-called trick plays. There were only seven places in a line to send a man with a ball, he said, and there ought not to be many more than seven plays.
. . .Perhaps his greatest teams came in 1920, 1924, 1929 and 1930. On the first was George Gipp, who was named by Rockne as the greatest player he ever had. The coach told the story of seeing Gipp, who was not trying for the team, throwing a ball and kicking on the campus and of inducing him to join the squad. Gipp died a few weeks after the close of the 1920 season of a throat infection, with Rockne at his bedside.
The 1924 team was the one of the famous Four Horsemen, Harry Stuhldreher, Jimmy Crowley, Don Miller and Elmer Layden. As a combination, they have not been excelled in modern back fields and they had a great line in front of them, led by the famous Adam Walsh at centre, who is now assisting with the coaching at Yale. That team of the Four Horsemen won all over the country, beating Princeton at Princeton with a temperature of 10 above zero, and several weeks later journeying to the Coast to defeat Stanford in a temperature of 70 degrees.
Patricia Heaton of ”Everybody Loves Raymond” is 51.
Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, is 44.
Sonny and Cher’s daughter Chastity is 40.
Famed bridge expert Charles Goren was born on March 4th in 1901.
Today is the birthday
… of Abe Vigoda. Fish on Barney Miller and Sal Tessio of The Godfather is 88.
… of Steven Hill. Adam Schiff on Law and Order is 87.
… of Dominic Chianese. Uncle Junior on The Sopranos is 78.
… of Edward James Olmos, 62.
Eddie Murray, the Baseball Hall of Fame inductee, and Paula Zahn, the broadcaster, are each half of 106 today.
Baseball great Honus Wagner was born on this date in 1874.
One of the Hall of Fame’s five original inductees in 1936, Honus Wagner combined rare offensive and defensive excellence throughout a 21-year career. Despite his awkward appearance – stocky, barrel-chested and bow-legged – the longtime Pirates shortstop broke into the big leagues by hitting .344 in 1897 with Louisville, the first of 17 consecutive seasons of hitting over .300, including eight as the National League batting champion. Wagner compiled a lifetime average of .329, and the Flying Dutchman also stole 722 bases, while leading the league in thefts on five occasions.
Winslow Homer was born on this date in 1836. The painting is his “Coming Storm” (1901). Click for larger version.
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.
Source: The National Gallery of Art, which has a fine online Winslow Homer exhibit.
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.
— Forrest McDonald in his review of Joseph J. Ellis’ His Excellency: George Washington.
Today is the birthday
… of Don Pardo. The original “Jeopardy!” and “Saturday Night Live” announcer is 91.
… of Senator Edward Kennedy. He’s 77. I like Senator Kennedy, think he has been a great senator if an imperfect human. But, for the life of me, I do not understand these guys hanging on well into their 70s. They truly know no other life.
… of Sparky Anderson. The baseball hall-of-fame manager is 75.
… of Julius Erving. Dr. J is 59.
… of Kyle MacLachlan. The actor is 50.
… of Vijay Singh. He’s 46.
… of Drew Barrymore. The actress is 34.
… of James Blunt, 32.
Artist Peter Hurd was born in Roswell, New Mexico, on this date in 1904. That’s his watercolor, “The Winos.”
American poets James Russell Lowell and Edna St. Vincent Millay were born on this date; Lowell in 1819 and Millay in 1892.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was a terse and moving spokesman during the Twenties, the Thirties and the Forties. She was an idol of the younger generation during the glorious early days of Greenwich Village when she wrote, what critics termed a frivolous but widely know poem which ended:
My candle burns at both ends, It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends, It gives a lovely light!
All critics agreed, however, that Greenwich Village and Vassar, plus a gypsy childhood on the rocky coast of Maine, produced one of the greatest American poets of her time. (The New York Times)
Rembrandt Peale was born on this date in 1778. His brothers were named Raphael, Rubens and Titian. Son of portrait-painter Charles Wilson Peale, Rembrandt Peale is known primarily for his many renditions of George Washington. Most are based on his most famous work, this portrait of Washington from 1795 (click to view larger version). Rembrandt Peale also painted a classic portrait of Thomas Jefferson.
Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter, should have been 47 today.