Jewel is 37 today. Joan Collins is 78. Drew Carey is 53.
Jewel’s last name is Kilcher.
Lauren Chapin, who played the youngest daughter, Kathy or Kitten, on “Father Knows Best,” is 66.
Benjamin Sherman Crothers — known to us better as Scatman Crothers — was born May 23rd in 1910. Crothers is best remembered as the permissive orderly in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the concerned chef in The Shining and as Louie the Garbage Man on the TV show Chico and the Man. He was also a successful composer and singer and did a number of cartoon voices. The nickname Scatman came from his scat singing. Crothers died in 1986.
James Buchanan Eads was born on this date in 1820. He was named for the politician, later president, his mother’s cousin. An engineer, Eads built ironclad gunboats for the Union during the Civil War. He constructed the first road and rail bridge across the Mississippi River —
What Eads did was to offer to build a bridge that was quite revolutionary. Instead of a truss design, the conventional form for railway bridges at the time, he suggested building an arched bridge, with spans in excess of 500 feet. To make sure it was strong enough, he wanted to build the arches of steel that was stronger than the wrought iron typically used in railroad bridges. To experienced bridge-builders, Eads’ bridge may have seemed as crazy as building a railway line to transport ocean-liners seems to us today. One critic wrote: “I deem it entirely unsafe and impracticable.” Arrogant and vain, Eads belittled his opponents and insisted on the infallibility of his calculations and the laws of physics. He proved himself right. Though the bridge took seven years to construct and cost more than a dozen men’s lives, it was a magnificent structure. And unlike scores of 19th century truss bridges that collapsed under the weight of trains, the Eads bridge still stands to this day.
Eads also designed the system of jetties that made the Mississippi River navigable from New Orleans to the Gulf year-round. At certain seasons the river would be too shallow; the jetties sped the current and scoured and deepened the channel — and, of course, changed nature in ways we must deal with today.
Clyde Champion Barrow and Bonnie Parker were shot to death in an ambush near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana, on May 23rd in 1934. The FBI has a web page with details about Bonnie and Clyde, including a photo of each. Not exactly Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and Gene Hackman (who portrayed Clyde’s brother Buck). All three were nominated for an acting Oscar, as were Michael J. Pollard and Estelle Parsons. Parsons, who played Buck’s wife Blanche in the 1967 film, won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
William Harvey Carney was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor on May 23rd in 1900 — for duty performed nearly 37 years earlier at Fort Wagner, S.C. Sergeant Carney was the first African-American to receive the Medal of Honor. Carney was a member of the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, the regiment whose story was told in the film Glory (1989) with Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman and Matthew Broderick. Carney was not portrayed in the film by name. The citation for Carney’s Medal of Honor reads: “When the color sergeant was shot down, this soldier grasped the flag, led the way to the parapet, and planted the colors thereon. When the troops fell back he brought off the flag, under a fierce fire in which he was twice severely wounded.”
