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Today is the birthday

… of Bill Cosby. He’s 74.

… of Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac. She’s 68.

… of Gaius Julius Caesar, born on July 12th around 100 BCE (some say July 13th). Caesar was named for his father, Gaius Julius Caesar III, and he had two sisters, both named Julia. If Caesar was named for a caesarean section, it was an ancestor’s birth, not his. The explanation for the name that Julius Caesar himself seemed to favor was that it came from the Moorish word caesai for elephant.

Caesar, of course, died on March 15, 44 BCE. Caesar never said “Et tu, Brute?” That’s Shakespeare (though not original with him). Some contemporaries said Caesar did say “καὶ σύ, τέκνον,” Greek for “You too, child.” If he said it, it may have been intended as a curse (this will happen to you) as much as a feeling of abandonment by Brutus.

It was Julius Caesar who fixed the calendar at 365 days with a leap day every fourth year. His formula had to be tweaked in 1582 with three less leap years every 400 years, but it stands pretty much as Caesar established it, the Julian Calendar, in 46 BCE.

Henry David Thoreau was born on this date in 1817; George Eastman, the inventor of roll film, in 1854; George Washington Carver in 1864; Jean Hersholt in 1886 and Buckminster Fuller in 1895. Hersholt was in 140 films, most famously as Heidi’s grandfather with Shirley Temple. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named its service award for Hersholt, who was president of the Academy and longtime president of the Motion Picture Relief Fund.

Oscar Hammerstein II was born on July 12th, 1895. Hammerstein won eight Tonys and two Oscars — for “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” and “It Might as Well Be Spring.”

Arthur Andrew Kelm was born 80 years ago today. In the movies he was known as Tab Hunter.

Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi is 52. Giorgio Armani is 77.

Elwyn Brooks White was born on July 11, 1899. As E.B. White we know him for Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.

John Quincy Adams was born on July 11, 1767.

Jake LaMotta, the boxer portrayed by Robert De Niro in Raging Bull, is 90 today. He was middleweight champion of the world 1949-1951.

Earl Henry Hamner, Jr., is 88 today. It’s he who wrote Spencer’s Mountain, based on his own childhood; it became the basis for the TV series The Waltons. Hamner was the voiceover narrator for the show. Good-night, Grandpa. Good-night, John-Boy.

Canadian author Alice Munro is 80. Ms. Munro won the 2009 Man Booker International Prize, “awarded once every two years to a living author for a body of work that has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage.”

Alice Munro is mostly known as a short story writer and yet she brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels. To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before.

Man Booker International Prize judging panel

Lolita, the actress Sue Lyon, is 65 today.

Arlo Guthrie is 64.

Béla Fleck is 53.

Adrian Grenier is 35 today.

Jessica Simpson is 31.

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).

Fred Gwynne, best know perhaps as Herman Munster, was born on July 10, 1926. He died in 1993.

Two long-time television personalities were born on this date. Don Herbert, Mr. Wizard, was born on July 10th in 1917. David Brinkley was born on July 10th in 1920.

Marcel Proust was born on July 10th in 1871. His fame is based on the novel À la recherche du temps perdu, which is best translated In Search of Lost Time. 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.

Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, began overnight on July 9-10, 1943. The amphibious landings were lead by General Bernard Montgomery with the British 8th Army and General George Patton with the American 7th Army. Overall commander was General Dwight Eisenhower, with Sir Harold Alexander second in command. The allied forces reached Messina, just across from the Italian mainland, on August 16th.

Today is the birthday

… of Kim Darby. She was the 22-year-old actress who played 14-year-old Mattie Ross of Yell County near Dardanelle, Arkansas, in the first True Grit. She is 64 today. Her given name was Deborah Zerby and she has been married five times.

… of Anjelica Huston. The third generation Oscar winner is 60. 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, 59.

She wanted to be a fiction writer. But straight out of college, she got hired by the New York Post, and a few years later, by The New York Times. She was so successful that a lot of people thought she was in line to be deputy editor of the paper. She really wanted to write fiction, and had been trying all along during her tenure at the Times — she managed to publish two novels while working full time and raising kids. But she didn’t have enough time to do both, so in 1995, she quit to become a full-time writer.

… of Kevin Bacon. He’s 53. 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 76 and Jerry Vale is 79. Or vice versa, I forget.

Jeffrey Tambor is 67. Toby Keith is 50. (I like that bar too, Toby.) Joan Osborne is 49. Billy Crudup is 43. Beck is 41.

Roone Arledge was born 80 years ago today. He died in 2002.

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.