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… of Kurt Russell, 56.

… of Gary Sinise, 52.

… of Rob Lowe 43.

… of Mia Hamm, 35 today.

It’s also the birth date of two greats who died young — Nat “King” Cole (1919-1965) and Rudolf Nureyev (1938-1993).

And the great golfer Bobby Jones was born on this date in 1902. This from his obituary in 1971:

In the decade following World War I, America luxuriated in the Golden Era of Sports and its greatest collection of super-athletes: Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb in baseball, Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney in boxing, Bill Tilden in tennis, Red Grange in football and Bobby Jones in golf.

Many of their records have been broken now, and others are destined to be broken. But one, sports experts agree, may outlast them–Bobby Jones’s grand slam of 1930.
. . .

At 28 he achieved the grand slam–victories in one year in the United States Open, British Open, United States Amateur and British Amateur championships. At that point, he retired from tournament golf.

A nation that idolized him for his success grew to respect him even more for his decision to treat golf as a game rather than a way of life. This respect grew with the years.

The New York Times

… of Jerry Lewis. He’s 81.

… of Erik Estrada of ”CHiPS.” Ponch is 58.

… of Eddie Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli’s son Wolfgang Van Halen. He’s 16.

The individual most responsible for the U.S. Constitution was born on this date in 1751. That’s James Madison.

… of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She’s 74.

… of Judd Hirsch. He’s 72.

… of Beach Boy Mike Love. He’s 66. Love is the cousin of brothers Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson.

… of Sylvester Stewart. He’s 64.

Sly and the Family Stone took the Sixties ideal of a generation coming together and turned it into deeply groove-driven music. Rock’s first integrated, multi-gender band became funky Pied Pipers to the Woodstock Generation, synthesizing rock, soul, R&B, funk and psychedelia into danceable, message-laden, high-energy music. In promoting their gospel of tolerance and celebration of differences, Sly and the Family Stone brought disparate audiences together during the latter half of the Sixties. The group’s greatest triumph came at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969. During their unforgettable nighttime set, leader Sly Stone initiated a fevered call-and-response with the audience of 400,000 during an electrifying version of “I Want to Take You Higher.”

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

… of Ry Cooder. He’s 60.

… of Eva Longoria, desperate at turning 32.

… of Quincey Jones. He’s 74.

In a musical career that has spanned six decades, Quincy Jones has earned his reputation as a renaissance man of American music. Jones has distinguished himself as a bandleader, a solo artist, a sideman, a songwriter, a producer, an arranger, a film composer, and a record label executive, and outside of music, he’s also written books, produced major motion pictures, and helped create television series. And a quick look at a few of the artists Jones has worked with suggests the remarkable diversity of his career — Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Lesley Gore, Michael Jackson, Peggy Lee, Ray Charles, Paul Simon, and Aretha Franklin.

All Music

… of Michael Caine. The two-time Oscar winner, six-time nominee, is 74. Caine won both times nominated in a supporting role. His leading role nominations were for Alfie, Sleuth, Educating Rita, and The Quiet American.

… of Billy Crystal is 60. Crystal once won an Emmy for hosting the Oscar telecast.

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, on this date in 1879.

He was home-schooled for the early part of his life, and when he finally went to school with the other children, his teachers thought he was developmentally disabled. He refused to study any subject he didn’t find interesting. The only subjects he did find interesting were math and philosophy. One teacher tried to have him expelled because all he did in class was sit in the back of the room smiling. He finally dropped out at the age of 16.

He went to a technical college in Zurich to study physics, but he often missed classes and only passed his final examination because his friend let him borrow all his lecture notes and was the only member of his class not to receive an assistant professorship. He was planning to get married, and suddenly he didn’t have any way to make a living. So he took a job at the Swiss patent office.

His job was to evaluate patent applications and determine whether the inventions described would actually work. He found that it was the perfect job for him. He didn’t have to bring any work home at night, when he was free to work on his own theories about physics. He was removed enough from the scientific community that he didn’t worry about whether his theories were fashionable or important. He just worked on the problems he found most interesting. Above all, he was interested in finding some law that could explain all the forces in the universe.

One night the spring of 1905, Einstein went to bed feeling extremely frustrated because he hadn’t been able to solve any of the problems he’d been working on for weeks. The following morning, he woke up and suddenly everything made sense. He said, “It was as if a storm broke loose in my mind.”

Einstein spent the next several weeks writing a paper on his theory, which came to be called the Special Theory of Relativity. That same year, 1905, Einstein published three more papers, each of which was just as revolutionary as the first, including the paper that included his most famous equation: E = mc².

The Writer’s Almanac