Famous birthdays

[dlbpharmd]

Just a little thought I had for a thread that might be fun. I'll list historical figures daily, if anyone wants to comment on anyone, feel free.

1794 Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Mexican Revolutionary.

1801 John Henry Newman, English theologian and writer.

1821 Charles Scribner, founded the publishing firm which became Charles Scribner's Sons and also founded Scribner's magazine.

1893 Andés Segovia, Spanish classical guitarist.

1907 W.H. Auden, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet (The Age of Anxiety).

1920 Robert S. Johnson, American World War II fighter ace who shot down 27 German planes.

1927 Erma Bombeck, author and humorist (The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank).

I'm a huge fan of Segovia. He's credited with defining classical guitar.

I remember watching Bombeck on Good Morning America - very witty, usually right on target with her commentary.

[Fist and Faith]

1893 Andés Segovia, Spanish classical guitarist.

I'm a huge fan of Segovia. He's credited with defining classical guitar.

Well then you shoulda spelled Andrés correctly.

More likely you copied and pasted, and they got it wrong?

Yes, he was the grandaddy of the genre. Fantastic musician!

[dlbpharmd]

Yeah, sorry!

[dlbpharmd]

1403 Charles VII, King of France.

1732 George Washington, Commander-in-chief of Continental forces during the American Revolution and first U.S. President.

1778 Rembrandt Peale, American painter known for portraits of U.S. founding fathers.

1857 Lord Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout Movement.

1857 Heinrich Hertz, German physicist, the first person to broadcast and receive radio waves.

1892 Edna St. Vincent Millay, poet.

1900 Sean O'Faolain, Irish short story writer.

1925 Edward Gorey, American writer and illustrator.

1932 Edward Kennedy, Massachusetts Senator, brother of John F. Kennedy.

1944 Jonathan Demme, film director (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia).

[I'm Murrin]

1918 - Robert Wadlow, tallest person in history

Edit: And apparently it was Steve Irwin's today.

[Cail]

It's also Drew Barrymore's birthday.

[Guest]

GF. Händel

Btw. Wiki is nice for this. Just enter month and day and there you go!

[dlbpharmd]

1633 Samuel Pepys, English diarist.

1685 George F. Handel, German composer.

1743 Meyer Amschel Rothschild, banker and founder of the Rothschild dynasty in Europe.

1868 W.E.B. [William Edward Burghardt] Du Bois, U.S. historian and civil rights leader, founder of what became the NAACP.

1883 Victor Fleming, film director (The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind)

1899 Erich Kastner, German poet, novelist and children's author (Emil and the Detectives).

1904 William Shirer, CBS broadcaster and author (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich).

1924 Allan MacLeod Cormack, physicist, developed the CAT scan.

[dlbpharmd]

Born on February 24

1500 Charles V, king of Spain and the last Holy Roman Emperor to be crowned by the Pope.

1786 Wilhelm Carl Grimm, compiler, with his brother of fairy tales.

1836 Winslow Homer, American painter.

1841 John Phillip Holland, inventor of the modern submarine.

1874 Honus Wagner, baseball shortstop known as "The Flying Dutchman."

1885 Chester Nimitz, U.S. admiral who commanded naval forces in the Pacific during WWII.

1887 Mary Ellen Chase, New England writer.

1909 August Derleth, writer (Still is the Summer Night, The Shield of the Valiant).

[dlbpharmd]

Born on February 25

1841 Pierre Auguste Renoir, French painter and founder of the French Impressionist movement.

1856 Charles Lang Freer, U.S. art collector.

1873 Enrico Caruso, Italian opera tenor.

1888 John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State to President Eisenhower.

1894 Meher Baba, spiritual leader.

1895 Rudolf von Eschwege, German fighter ace in World War I.

1905 Adele Davis, nutritionist.

1917 Anthony Burgess, English writer (A Clockwork Orange).

[dlbpharmd]

Born on February 26

1802 Victor Hugo, French novelist and poet (Les Misérables).

1829 Levi Strauss, creator of blue jeans.

1832 John George Nicolay, private secretary to Abraham Lincoln

1846 William Frederick Cody, aka "Buffalo Bill".

1877 Rudolph Dirks, cartoonist, creator of the "Katzenjammer Kids."

1879 Mabel Dodge Luhan, American biographer.

1893 I(vor) A(rmstrong) Richards, writer, critic and teacher.

1928 Antoine "Fats" Domino, American singer.

[dlbpharmd]

Born on February 27

1807 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet.

1886 Hugo Black, U.S. Supreme Court justice.

1888 Lotte Lehmann, German opera singer.

1891 David Sarnoff, RCA board chairman and a pioneer of U.S. television

1897 Marian Anderson, singer.

1902 John Steinbeck, American novelist (The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men).

1904 James T. Farrel, author (Young Lonigan).

1910 Peter De Vries, writer, poetry editor (Poetry Magazine, The New Yorker).

1912 Lawrence Durrell, novelist (The Alexandria Quartet).

1917 John Connally, Texas Governor, wounded in the assassination of President John Kennedy.

1930 Joanne Woodward, actress (Rachel, Rachel, The Three Faces of Eve).

1932 Elizabeth Taylor, actress (Cleopatra, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?).

1934 Ralph Nader, consumer advocate.

[dlbpharmd]

Born on February 28

1533 Michel de Montaigne, French moralist who created the personal essay.

1820 John Tenniel, illustrator of various books (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland).

1824 Charles Blondin, tightrope walker.

1894 Ben Hecht, writer.

1901 Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize-winning American chemist.

1909 Stephen Spender, English poet, critic.

1911 Denis Burkitt, British medical researcher.

1926 Svetlana Stalin, daughter of Josef Stalin.

[dlbpharmd]

Born on March 1

1810 Frédéric Chopin, composer and pianist.

1837 William Dean Howells, novelist.

1904 Glenn Miller, big band leader during the 1930s and '40s.

1914 Ralph Waldo Ellison, African-American author (Invisible Man).

1917 Robert Lowell, Jr., poet, won Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for Lord Weary's Castle.

1921 Richard Wilbur, Pulitzer Prize winning poet and translator.

1921 Howard Nemerov, writer, another Pulitzer Prize recipient.

[dlbpharmd]

Born on March 2

1793 Sam Houston, president of Texas, later Texas senator and governor.

1810 Leo XIII, 256th Roman Catholic Pope.

1829 Carl Schurz, Civil War general, political reformer and anti-imperialist.

1900 Kurt Weill, German-born composer (The Threepenny Opera).

1904 Henry Dreyfuss, industrial designer of everything from telephones to the interior of the Boeing 707.

1904 Theodor Seuss Geisel [Dr. Seuss], author of numerous children's books including The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham.

1923 Doc Watson, singer and guitarist.

1931 Mikhail Gorbachev, Secretary General of the Soviet Union.
Responsible for restructuring the Soviet economy (perestroika) and openness and information (glasnost).

1942 John Irving, novelist (The World According to Garp).

[Xar]

You forgot at least another very important historical figure, Pope Pius XII, whose papacy spanned the Second World War and is still the subject of historical controversy, among other things, about the Reichskonkordat between the Holy See and Hitler's Germany, as well as the Vatican's neutral stance towards anti-Jewish laws during WWII. He was also an ardent supporter of the Big Bang theory at a time when it wasn't the standard theory of the origins of the universe. He was also the first Pope to promulgate the Church's modern view of family planning. His encyclic "Humani Generis" was also the first time a Pope addressed evolution at length, and generally speaking, in favorable (or non-derogatory) terms.

[dlbpharmd]

Born on March 3

1831 George M. Pullman, inventor of the railway sleeping car.

1847 Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the first telephone as well as other devices.

1873 William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor.

1895 Matthew Ridgway, U.S. Army leader in World War II and Korea.

1911 Jean Harlow, (Hell's Angels, Dinner at Eight).

1916 Robert Whitehead, Broadway producer (Bus Stop, A Man for All Seasons).

1918 Arthur Kornberg, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist.

1920 Robert Searle, cartoonist.

1926 James Merrill, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet (Divine Comedies).

1927 Nicolas Freeling, crime writer.

[dlbpharmd]

Born on March 4

1394 Prince Henry the Navigator, sponsor of Portuguese voyages of discovery

1678 Antonio Vivaldi, Italian composer and violinist.

1747 Casimir Pulaski, American Revolutionary War general.

1852 Lady (Isabella Augusta) Gregory, Irish playwright, helped found the Abbey Theatre.

1888 Knute Rockne, football player and coach for Notre Dame.

1901 Charles Goren, world expert on the game of bridge.

1904 Ding Ling, Chinese writer and women's rights activist.

1928 Alan Sillitoe, novelist (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner).

1932 Miriam Makeba, South African singer.

1934 Jane Goodall, British anthropologist, known for her work with African chimpanzees.

[dlbpharmd]

Born on March 5

1326 Louis I (the Great), King of Hungary.

1574 William Oughtred, mathematician and inventor of the slide rule.

1824 Elisha Harris, U.S. physician and founder of the American Public Health Association.

1824 James Merritt Ives, lithographer for Currier and Ives.

1853 Howard Pyle, writer and illustrator (The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood).

1870 Frank Norris, novelist (McTeague, The Octopus).

1887 Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazillian composer.

1938 Lynn Margulis, biologist.

1948 Leslie Marmon Silko, writer (Ceremony).

[dlbpharmd]

Born on March 6

1475 Michelangelo Buonarroti, painter, sculptor and architect.

1806 Elizabeth Barret Browning, poet (Sonnets from the Portuguese).

1831 Philip Henry Sheridan, Union Army general.

1885 Ring Lardner, writer (You Know Me, Al).

1899 Richard Leo Simon, publisher, partner of Max Schuster.

1908 Lou Costello, American comedian, partner of Bud Abbott.

1928 Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Columbian-born novelist (One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera).

1937 Valentina Nikolayeva-Tereshkova, Russian astronaut, the first woman to orbit the Earth.

1944 Dame Kiri Te Kannawa, operatic soprano.