Angela Lansbury is 84 today. Lansbury was 36 when she played 34-year-old Laurence Harvey’s mother in The Manchurian Candidate. For that alone she deserved the Academy Award nomination she received; it was her third supporting actress nomination.
Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass is 82. “Whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history” (from the Nobel press release, 1999).
Suzanne Somers turns 63 today.
Tim Robbins is 51 today. Robbins won a supporting actor Oscar for Mystic River and received a best director nomination for Dead Man Walking. Hard to beat his portrayal of Andy Dufresne, though.
John Mayer is 32 today.
Nobel and Pulitizer Prize winner Eugene O’Neill was born on October 16th in 1888.
Eugene O’Neill was one of the greatest playwrights in American history. Through his experimental and emotionally probing dramas, he addressed the difficulties of human society with a deep psychological complexity. O’Neill’s disdain for the commercial realities of the theater world he was born into led him to produce works of importance and integrity.
John Brown began his famous raid on this date in 1859:
Late on the night of October 16, 1859, John Brown and twenty-one armed followers stole into the town of Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) as most of its residents slept. The men–among them three free blacks, one freed slave, and one fugitive slave–hoped to spark a rebellion of freed slaves and to lead an “army of emancipation” to overturn the institution of slavery by force. To these ends the insurgents took some sixty prominent locals including Col. Lewis Washington (great-grand nephew of George Washington) as hostages and seized the town’s United States arsenal and its rifle works.
The upper hand which nighttime surprise had afforded the raiders quickly eroded, and by the evening of October 17, the conspirators who were still alive were holed-up in an engine house. In order to be able to distinguish between insurgents and hostages, marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee waited for daylight on October 18 to storm the building.
I’m reading Douglas Brinkley’s Wheels for the World about Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company.
When the company was founded in 1903 it included 12 stockholders (including John and Horace Dodge!). One of the 12 proposed a thirteenth who wanted to invest $500. Henry Ford said no, thirteen was unlucky.
He was right. It was unlucky for the would-be investor who was denied. That $500 would have profited $1,750,000 by 1919.
(When Henry and son Edsel Ford bought out the original investors in 1919, the two Dodge brothers took $12.5 million each on their original investment of $5,000. They had also been major suppliers of engines and other components in the early years, and in fact bought the stock in 1903 not with cash, but in lieu of what Ford owed them.
But the story continues. Both Dodge brothers contracted the flu in 1919 and died the following year, John 55 and Horace 52. Their widows sold Dodge Brothers in 1925 for $146 million. Walter P. Chrysler bought the company for $170 million in stock three years later.)
“I don’t know. I can only guess that after the 2 1/2-hour, heart-stopping flying-saucer flight over much of Weld County — an adventure in which little Balloon Boy turned into little Attic Boy — that we may never be sure again.”
The boss of a large company needed to call one of his employees about an urgent problem with one of the main computers, dialed the employee’s home phone number and was greeted with a child’s whisper.
“Hello.”
“Is your daddy home?” he asked.
“Yes,” whispered the small voice.
“May I talk with him?”
The child whispered, “No.”
Surprised, and wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, “Is your mommy there?”
“Yes.”
“May I talk with her?”
Again the small voice whispered, “No.”
Hoping there was somebody with whom he could leave a message, the boss asked, “Is anybody else there?”
“Yes,” whispered the child, “a policeman.”
Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee’s home, the boss asked, “May I speak with the policeman?”
“No, he’s busy,” whispered the child.
“Busy doing what?”
“Talking to Daddy and Mommy and the fireman,” came the whispered answer.
Growing concerned and even worried as he heard what sounded like a helicopter through the phone the boss asked, “What is that noise?”
“A hello-copper,” answered the whispering voice.
“What is going on there?” asked the boss, now truly alarmed.
In an awed whispering voice the child answered, “The search team just landed the hello-copper.”
Alarmed, concerned, and more than a little frustrated the boss asked, “What are they searching for?”
Still whispering, the young voice replied along with a muffled giggle:
“According to research conducted by the Nielsen company (you know, the TV ratings folks), the average internet user now spends 68 hours online per month.”
“It’s literally amazing to me that our press corps hasn’t yet managed to draw a distinction between good news on Wall Street for companies like Goldman, and good news in reality.”
“I watched carefully the reporting of the Dow breaking 10,000 the other day and not anywhere did I see a major news organization include a paragraph of the “On the other hand, so fucking what?” sort …”
… of Lee Iacocca. The former Ford executive and Chrysler chairman is 85.
… of Barry McGuire. The rock/folk singer is 74. His “Eve of Destruction” is even closer at hand.
… of Linda Lavin. Television’s “Alice” is 72.
… of Carole Penny Marshall. The actress turned director is 67.
… of Jim Palmer. The baseball hall-of-famer is 64. We don’t see him in those underwear ads as often anymore. Palmer won World Series games in three decades (1966, 1970 and 1971, 1983).
… of Richard Carpenter. Karen’s brother is 63.
… of Emeril Lagasse. The TV chef is 50.
… of Sarah Ferguson. She’s 50.
… of Dominic West, foremost of The Wire, 40.
The economist John Kenneth Galbraith was born 101 years ago today. Galbraith once wrote a speech for President Lyndon Johnson. Galbraith was a very prominent economist and not a speech writer, but he worked diligently on the draft and was impressed with what he produced. It was given to LBJ who, out of respect for the economist, told him personally what he thought. “Ken,” LBJ said. “Writing a speech is a lot like wetting your pants. What feels warm and comforting to you can just seem cold and sticky to everyone else.” Galbraith died in 2006.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was born 92 years ago today. By the time of his death in 2006 Schlesinger had become a celebrity — a person known mostly for being well-known — but he was the winner of two Pulitizer Prizes in history — The Age of Jackson and A Thousand Days.
Before Schlesinger, historians thought of American democracy as the product of an almost mystical frontier or agrarian egalitarianism. The Age of Jackson toppled that interpretation by placing democracy’s origins firmly in the context of the founding generation’s ideas about the few and the many, and by seeing democracy’s expansion as an outcome of struggles between classes, not sections. More than any previous account, Schlesinger’s examined the activities and ideas of obscure, ordinary Americans, as well as towering political leaders. While he identified most of the key political events and changes of the era, Schlesinger also located the origins of modern liberal politics in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, and in their belief, as he wrote, that future challenges “will best be met by a society in which no single group is able to sacrifice democracy and liberty to its interests.”
Mario Puzo was born on October 15th in 1920. The Writer’s Almanac told us this in 2004:
[Puzo is] best known as the author of the novel The Godfather (1969), which was made into a movie in 1972. People had written novels and made movies about the mafia before, but the mafia characters had always been the villains. Puzo was the first person to write about members of the mafia as the sympathetic main characters of a story. The son of Italian immigrants, he started out trying to write serious literary fiction. He published two novels that barely sold any copies. He fell into debt, trying to support his family as a freelance writer. One Christmas Eve, he had a severe gall bladder attack and took a cab to the hospital. When he got out of the cab, he was in so much pain that he fell into the gutter. Lying there, he said to himself, “Here I am, a published writer, and I am dying like a dog.” He vowed that he would devote the rest of his writing life to becoming rich and famous. The Godfather became the best-selling novel of the 1970s, and many critics credit Puzo with inventing the mafia as a serious literary and cinematic subject. He went on to publish many other books, including The Sicilian (1984) and The Last Don (1996), but he always felt that his best book was the last book he wrote before he became a success – The Fortunate Pilgrim (1964), about an ordinary Italian immigrant family.
Puzo died in 1999.
Edith Bolling Galt Wilson was born on October 15, 1872. The 59-year-old president and widower Woodrow Wilson married the 43-year-old widow Mrs. Galt in 1915. (Michael Douglas was 51 and Annette Benning 37 when they played a fictional “first couple” in the 1995 film The American President.)
[President Wilson’s] health failed in September 1919; a stroke left him partly paralyzed. His constant attendant, Mrs. Wilson took over many routine duties and details of government. But she did not initiate programs or make major decisions, and she did not try to control the executive branch. She selected matters for her husband’s attention and let everything else go to the heads of departments or remain in abeyance. Her “stewardship,” she called this. And in My Memoir, published in 1939, she stated emphatically that her husband’s doctors had urged this course upon her.
… don’t take food, don’t take children, and don’t drive a minivan.
Our observations indicate that bears entering minivans typically did so by popping open a rear side window and it seems that this was easier for minivans compared to other vehicle classes. We note that bears are strong and well equipped (long claws) to open a variety of structurally sound materials (e.g., logs and ant mounds), and we commonly saw car doors bent open, windows on all sides of the vehicle broken, and seats ripped out, all of which appeared effortless for bears.
“My friends brother’s Municipal League baseball team is named the Stepdads. Seeing as none of the guys on the team are actual stepdads, She inquired about the name. He explained, ‘Cuz we beat you, and you hate us.’ ”
Who was Eisenhower’s direct superior in the Army chain of command when he was Supreme Allied Commander in Europe?
How many actors have portrayed James Bond in the 22 Bond films?
Which schools won the national basketball championship the two years out of 12 when John Wooden’s UCLA team did not?
John Dean’s wife was quite evident during the Watergate hearings. What is her first name? (Their 37th anniversary was yesterday.)
“Night Court” was on for nine seasons (193 episodes). What was the character name of the assistant D.A., the clerk or the bailiff? First names will do.
In what current television series is Adrian Pasdar a cast member?
Is Usher his real first name or his real surname?
Who was Time’s Man of the Year for 1945?
[I intend to make Today’s Trivia Quiz a continuing feature. Do you want me to post the answers? Right away? After a while? In a comment? Some other way?]
The fiction nominees were: Bonnie Jo Campbell for “American Salvage”; Colum McCann, for “Let the Great World Spin”; Daniyal Mueenuddin for “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders”; Jayne Anne Phillips for “Lark and Termite”; and Marcel Theroux for “Far North.”
Nominees in the nonfiction category were: David M. Carroll for “Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook”; Sean B. Carroll for “Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species”; Greg Grandin for “Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City”; Adrienne Mayor for “The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy”; and T. J. Stiles for “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.”
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station took a photo of the Arnica Fire in Yellowstone National Park. Click the image for larger version and to learn more.
WASHINGTON – Just moments after she broke with fellow Republicans and voted in favor of health care reform, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) came under fire from the GOP for allegedly lying about her nation of birth.
“This vote is going to raise suspicions, once again, that Sen. Snowe was born in Kenya,” said GOP Chairman Michael Steele. “We demand that she prove, once and for all, that she is definitely not Kenyan.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II and the 34th president of the United States, was born in Denison, Texas, on this date in 1890. His family moved to Abilene, Kansas, in 1892 and he graduated from Abilene High School in 1909.
Eisenhower attended the U.S. Military Academy, class of 1915, the class the stars fell on — of 164 graduates, 59 attained the rank of general, led by Eisenhower and Omar Bradley. Eisenhower never saw combat first hand during his 37 year army career.
Military leadership of the victorious Allied forces in Western Europe during World War II invested Dwight David Eisenhower with an immense popularity, almost amounting to devotion, that twice elected him President of the United States. His enormous political success was largely personal, for he was not basically a politician dealing in partisan issues and party maneuvers. What he possessed was a superb talent for gaining the respect and affection of the voters as the man suited to guide the nation through cold war confrontations with Soviet power around the world and to lead the country to domestic prosperity.
Eisenhower’s gift for inspiring confidence in himself perplexed some analysts because he was not a dashing battlefield general nor a masterly military tactician; apparently what counted most in his generalship also impressed the voters most: an ability to harmonize diverse groups and disparate personalities into a smoothly functioning coalition.
… of John Wooden. The Wizard of Westwood is 99. Ten national championships in 12 years.
Natalie Maines with husband Adrian Pasdar and son Jackson Pasdar
… of former surgeon general C. Everett Koop. Guess he knew what he was talking about because he’s 93 today.
… of Roger Moore. The oldest of the James Bonds is 82.
… of former Nixon White House Counsel and convicted multiple felon John Dean, 71 today.
… of Ralph Lauren. The founder of Polo is 70.
… of the judge of Night Court, Harry Anderson, who is 57 today.
… of Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks. She’s 35.
… of Usher. He’s 31.
Edward Estlin Cummings was born October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We know him as e.e. cummings.
In his verse, Cummings tended to substitute verbs for nouns, he used patently eccentric punctuation, and he disregarded norms of capitalization. But despite unconventional style, he wrote about traditional themes, stuff like love and nature.
my girl’s tall with hard long eyes
as she stands, with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress, good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
like a white shocking wire, when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge–my girl’s tall
and taut, with thin legs just like a vine
that’s spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me, and to kiss my face and head.
This Kenneth is the third in a line of four Kenneths. The first Kenneth, my eponymous grandfather, was born on this date in 1899.
… became Saguaro National Park on this date in 1994.
This unique desert is home to the most recognizable cactus in the world, the majestic saguaro. Visitors of all ages are fascinated and enchanted by these desert giants, especially their many interesting and complex interrelationships with other desert life. Saguaro cacti provide their sweet fruits to hungry desert animals. They also provide homes to a variety of birds, such as the Harris’ hawk, Gila woodpecker and the tiny elf owl. Yet, the saguaro requires other desert plants for its very survival. During the first few years of a very long life, a young saguaro needs the shade and protection of a nurse plant such as the palo verde tree. With an average life span of 150 years, a mature saguaro may grow to a height of 50 feet and weigh over 10 tons.
