Saturday, October 15, 2022

October 15

Birthdays:

 

1974 ~ Roxane Gay, American writer and academic.  She was born in Omaha, Nebraska.

 

1969 ~ Dominic West (né Dominic Gerald Francis Eagleton West), English actor.  He is best known for his role as Jimmy McNulty on the HBO series The Wire.  He was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England.

 

1960 ~ Michael Lewis (né Michael Monroe Lewis), American financial journalist and non-fiction writer.  He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana.

 

1959 ~ Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York (née Sarah Margaret Ferguson), former wife of Prince Andrew of Great Britain.  They married in 1986 and divorced 10 years later.  She was born in London, England.

 

1959 ~ Emeril Lagassé (né Emeril John Lagassé, III), American chef.  He was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, but is best known for his mastery of creole and Cajun cuisine.

 

1955 ~ Cathy Ladman, American stand-up comedian, and television writer.  She was born in New York, New York.

 

1949 ~ Thomas Bopp (né Thomas Joel Bopp; d. Jan. 5, 2018), American amateur astronomer best known for being a co-discoverer of the Hale-Bopp comet.  He was born in Denver, Colorado.  He died of liver failure at age 68 in Phoenix, Arizona.

 

1946 ~ Richard Carpenter (né Richard Lynn Carpenter), American musician and, along with sister, Karen (1950 ~ 1983), made up the duo, The Carpenters.  He was born in New Haven, Connecticut.

 

1944 ~ David Trimble, Baron Trimble (né William David Trimble; d. July 25, 2022) Irish politician and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize.  He was born in Bangor, Northern Ireland.  He died at age 77 following a brief illness.

 

1943 ~ Penny Marshall (née Carole Penny Marshall; d. Dec. 17, 2018), American sit-com star who became a big-time director.  She directed Tom Hanks in the movie Big.  Her brother was actor Garry Marshall.  She was born in New York, New York.  She died at age 75 of heart failure caused by diabetes and cardiovascular disease in Los Angeles, California.

 

1940 ~ Peter C. Doherty (né Peter Charles Doherty), Australian surgeon and immunologist.  He was the recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  He was born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

 

1937 ~ Linda Lavin, American actress.  She was born in Portland, Maine.

 

1935 ~ Bobby Morrow (né Bobby Joe Morrow; d. May 30, 2020), American sprinting champion who ran from the spotlight.  He won 3 gold medals at the 1956 Olympics.  He was born in Harlingen, Texas.  He died at age 84 in San Benito, Texas.

 

1933 ~ Poppa Neutrino (né William David Pearlman; d. Jan. 23, 2011), American free spirit who rafted across the Atlantic Ocean.  He was born in Fresno, California.  He died of heart failure in New Orleans, Louisiana at age 77.

 

1925 ~ Mickey Baker (né MacHouston Baker; d. Nov. 27, 2012), African-American guitar virtuoso who inspired a rock ‘n’ roll generation.  He was born in Louisville, Kentucky.  He died at age 87 in Toulouse, France.

 

1924 ~ Lee Iacocca (né Lido Anthony Iacocca; d. July 2, 2019), American businessman and master salesman who saved Chrysler.  He was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  He died at age 94 in Los Angeles, California.

 

1923 ~ Eugene Patterson (né Eugene Corbett Patterson; d. Jan. 12, 2013), American Southern editor who fostered racial equality.  He was the editor of The Atlanta Constitution from 1960 until 1968.  He was born in Valdosta, Georgia.  He died of cancer at age 89.

 

1920 ~ Mario Puzo (né Mario Gianluigi Puzo; d. July 2, 1999), American author best known for his novel The Godfather.  He was born in New York, New York.  He died at age 78 in West Bay Shore, New York.

 

1917 ~ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (né Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; d. Feb. 28, 2007), American historian.  He was born in Columbus, Ohio.  He died at age 89 in New York, New York.

 

1908 ~ John Kenneth Galbraith (b. Apr. 29, 2006), Canadian-American economist.  He was born in Iona Station, Ontario, Canada.  He died at age 97 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 

1907 ~ Varian Fry (d. Sept. 13, 1967), American journalist.  He ran a rescue network in Vichy France and helped numerous Jewish refugees to escape from Nazi Germany.  He was one of the first five Americans to be recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.  He was born in New York, New York.  He died of a cerebral hemorrhage a month before his 60th birthday in Redding, Connecticut.

 

1894 ~ Moshe Sharett (né Moshe Shertok; d. July 7, 1965), 2nd Prime Minister of Israel.  He served as Prime Minister from January 1954 until November 1955.  He died at age 70 in Jerusalem.

 

1893 ~ Carol II, King of Romania (d. Apr. 4, 1953).  He was King from June 1930 until his abdication in September 1940.  He was married three times.  His first marriage to Zizi Lambrino was annulled.  He then married Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark.  His third wife, whom he married following his abdication, was his former mistress Magda Lupescu.  He was of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.  He was the son of Ferdinand I, King of Romania and Marie of Edinburg.  He died at age 59.

 

1881 ~ Sir P.G. Wodehouse (né Pelham Grenville Wodehouse; d. Feb. 14, 1975), English author.  He died of a heart attack at age 93.

 

1878 ~ Paul Raynaud (né Jean Paul Raynaud; d. Sept. 21, 1966), Prime Minister of France.  He served as Prime Minister from March 1940 until June 1940.  He died 24 days before his 88th birthday.

 

1872 ~ Edith Bolling Wilson (née Edith Bolling; d. Dec. 28, 1961), First Lady of the United States and second wife of President Woodrow Wilson.  They married while Wilson was President.  She was First Lady from December 1915 until March 1921.  She died on what would have been her husband’s 105th birthday.  She was born in Wytheville, Virginia. She died in Washington, D.C.  She was 89 at the time of her death.

 

1858 ~ John L. Sullivan (né John Lawrence Sullivan; d. Feb. 2, 1918), American boxer.  He was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts.  He died at age 59 in Abington, Massachusetts.

 

1844 ~ Friedrich Nietzsche (né Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche; d. Aug. 25, 1900), German philosopher.  He died at age 55.

 

1831 ~ Isabella Lucy Bird (d. Oct. 7, 1904), English explorer, writer, and natural historian.  She died a week before her 73rd birthday.

 

1830 ~ Helen Hunt Jackson (née Helen Marie Fiske; d. Aug. 12, 1885), American writer and poet.  She was a social activist for Native Americans.  She is best known for her novel Ramona, which depicted the Federal government’s mistreatment of Native Americans in the American Southwest.  She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts.  She died of stomach cancer at age 54 in San Francisco, California.

 

1825 ~ Marie of Prussia (d. May 17, 1889), Queen consort of Bavaria.  She was the wife of Maximilian II, King of Bavaria.  They married in 1842.  She was of the House of Hohenzollern.  She was the daughter of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia and Princess Marie Anna of Hesse-Homburg.  She died at age 63.

 

1814 ~ Mikhail Lermontov (d. July 27, 1841), Russian writer and poet.  He was born in Moscow, Russian Empire.  He was killed in a duel at age 26.

 

1795 ~ Frederick William IV, King of Prussia (d. Jan. 2, 1861).  He reigned from June 1840 until his death 21 years later.  He was married to Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria.  He was of the House of Hohenzollern.  He was the son of Frederick William III, King of Prussia and Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.  He died at age 65.

 

1763 ~ Johann Georg Tralles (d. Nov. 19, 1822), German mathematician and physicist.  The crater Tralles on the moon is named in his honor.  He was born in Hamburg, Germany.  He died a month after his 59th birthday in London, England.

 

1608 ~ Evangelista Torricelli (d. Oct. 25, 1647), Italian mathematician and physicist.  He is best known for his invention of the barometer.  He was born in Rome.  He died in Florence of what is believed to be typhoid 10 days after his 39thbirthday.

 

1290 ~ Anne of Bohemia (d. Sept. 3, 1313), Queen consort of Bohemia.  She was the first wife of Henry of Bohemia, who was also known as Henry of Carinthia.  They married in 1306 when she was 16 years old.  There were no children of this marriage.  She was of the Přemyslid dynasty.  She was the daughter of Wenceslaus II, King of Bohemia and Judith of Habsburg.  She died at age 22.

 

1265 ~ Temür Öljeytü Khan (d. Feb. 10, 1307), Mongolian Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty.  He ruled from May 10, 1294 until his death on Feb. 10, 1307.  He died at age 41.

 

1176 ~ Leopold VI, Duke of Austria (d. July 28, 1230).  He ruled from 1198 until his death in 1230.  He was married to Theodora Angelina.  He was of the House of Babenberg.  He was the son of Leopold V, Duke of Austria and Helena of Hungary.  He died at age 54.

 

70 BCE ~ Virgil (d. Sept. 21, 19 BCE), Roman poet.  The traditional dates ascribed to Virgil’s birth and death.  He is believed to have been 50 when he died.

 

Events that Changed the World:

 

2013 ~ A 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck the Philippines, killing over 200 people.

 

2009 ~ President Barack Obama (b. 1961) visited New Orleans.  It was his first visit as President.  He visited the Martin Luther King Charter School, located in the 9th Ward, and he held a “town meeting” at the University of New Orleans.

 

2006 ~ A 6.7 magnitude earthquake struck Hawaii, causing considerable damage, including the closure of the Honolulu International Airport.

 

2001 ~ The Galileo spacecraft passed within 112 miles of Io, one of the moons of Jupiter.

 

1991 ~ Clarence Thomas (b. 1948) was confirmed as an Associate Justice Supreme Court Justice.

 

1990 ~ Mikhail Gorbachev (1931 ~ 2022) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to lessen the Cold War tensions and open up the Soviet Union to the West.

 

1966 ~ Huey P. Newton (1942 ~ 1989) and Bobby Seale (b. 1936) founded the Black Panther Party.

 

1956 ~ Fortran, the first modern computer language, was shared with the coding community.

 

1954 ~ Hurricane Hazel struck the eastern seaboard, killing 95 people.  It was deemed a Category 4 storm when it made landfall in North Carolina.  Massive flooding because of the storm reached as far north as Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  The storm formed on October 5 and dissipated on October 18, 1954.

 

1951 ~ I Love Lucy began its broadcast.  The show ran for 6 seasons.

 

1948 ~ Gerald Ford (1913 ~ 2006) and Betty Bloomer (1918 ~ 2011) were married.

 

1939 ~ The New York Municipal Airport, later renamed LaGuardia Airport, was dedicated.

 

1928 ~ The airship, Graf Zeppelin completed its first trans-Atlantic flight and landed in Lakehurst, New Jersey.

 

1894 ~ In what became known as the Dreyfus Affair, Alfred Dreyfus (1859 ~ 1835) was arrested on trumped-up charges of spying.  His arrest was due to the fact that he was Jewish.

 

1878 ~ The Edison Electric Light Company began operation.

 

1863 ~ The Confederate submarine, the H.L. Hunley, sank during a test, killing 21 crew members, including its inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley (1823 ~ 1863).

 

1815 ~ Napoleon I of France (1769 ~ 1821) began his exile on Saint Helena.

 

1811 ~ The first steamboat to sail the Mississippi River arrived in New Orleans, Louisiana.  The steamer, named the New Orleans, was built in Pittsburgh.  Service on the Mississippi was from New Orleans, Louisiana to Natchez, Mississippi.

 

1793 ~ Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France (1755 ~ 1793) was tried and convicted and condemned to death.  She would be executed the following day, on October 16, 1793.

 

1764 ~ After observing a group of friars singing in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome, Edward Gibbon (1737 ~ 1794) was inspired to begin writing The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

 

1582 ~ Pope Gregory XIII (1502 ~ 1585) implemented the Gregorian calendar.  In Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, this date immediately followed October 4 for this year only.  Implementation of the Gregorian calendar in other countries followed in later years.

 

1066 ~ Edgar the Ætheling (1051 ~ 1126) was proclaimed King of England, but he was never crowned.  He was the last male member of the royal house of Cedric Wessex.  He reigned only until December 1066 when he ceded power to William the Conqueror (1028 ~ 1087).

 

Good-Byes:

 

2018 ~ Paul Allen (né Paul Gardner Allen; b. Jan. 21, 1953), American tech visionary who co-founded Microsoft.  He was born and died in Seattle, Washington.  He died of cancer at age 65.

 

2018 ~ Dorcas Reilly (b. July 22, 1926), American culinary inventor who created a Thanksgiving staple.  In 1955, while working for the Campbell’s Soup Company, she created the Green Bean Casserole.  She died at age 92.

 

2016 ~ Bob Hoover (né Robert Anderson Hoover; b. Jan. 24, 1922), American war hero who became an aviation daredevil.  He flew Spitfires during World War II and was shot down off the coast of France in 1944.  After the War, he became a test pilot and flight instructor.  He was also known as an air show display pilot.  He was born in Nashville, Tennessee.  He died at age 94 in Los Angeles, California.

 

2012 ~ Norodom Sihanouk (b. Oct 31, 1922), Cambodian king and 1st Prime Minister of Cambodia who reigned over independence and bloodshed.  He was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, French Indochina.  He died 2 weeks before his 90th birthday in Beijing, China.

 

2011 ~ Sue Mengers (née Susi Mengers; b. Sept. 2, 1932), German-born American Hollywood talent agent who mastered her part.  She was born in Hamburg, Germany.  She died of pneumonia at age 79 in Beverly Hills, California.

 

2010 ~ Mildred Fay Jefferson (b. Apr. 4, 1926), African-American physician and anti-abortion activist.  She was born in Pittsburg, Texas.  She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts at age 84.

 

2008 ~ Edie Adams (née Elizabeth Edith Enke; b. Apr. 16, 1927), American sultry singer who pitched Muriel cigars.  She was born in Kingston, Pennsylvania.  She died at age 81 in Los Angeles, California.

 

2000 ~ Vincent Canby (b. July 27, 1924), American journalist and critic.  He was born in Chicago, Illinois.  He died of cancer at age 76 in New York, New York.

 

2000 ~ Konrad Emil Bloch (b. Jan. 21, 1912), German-born American biochemist and recipient of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research in the mechanism and regulation of cholesterol metabolism.  He left Germany in 1934 to escape the Nazi persecutions.  He died of heart failure at age 88 in Burlington, Massachusetts.

 

1980 ~ Mikhail Lavrentyev (b. Nov. 19, 1900), Russian physicist and mathematician.  He died about a month before his 80th birthday in Moscow, Soviet Union.

 

1968 ~ Virginia Lee Burton (b. Aug. 30, 1909), American author and illustrator best known for her children’s books.  She wrote the 1938 book Mike Milligan and His Steam Shovel.  She was born in Newton Centre, Massachusetts.  She died of lung cancer at age 59 in Boston, Massachusetts.

 

1965 ~ Abraham Fraenkel (b. Feb. 17, 1891), German-born Israeli mathematician.  He was the first Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  He was born in Munich, Bavaria.  He died at age 74 in Jerusalem, Israel.

 

1964 ~ Cole Porter (né Cole Albert Porter; b. June 9, 1891), American composer and lyricist.  He is best known for his witty, sophisticated songs and musicals.  He was born in Peru, Indiana.  He died of kidney failure at age 73 in Santa Monica, California.

 

1959 ~ Lipót Fejér (né Leopold Weisz; b. Feb. 9, 1880), Hungarian mathematician.  He died at age 79 in Budapest, Hungary.

 

1958 ~ Elizabeth Alexander (née Frances Elizabeth Somerville Caldwell; b. Dec. 13, 1908), British geologist and physicist.  Her wartime work with radar and radio led to early developments in radio astronomy.  She was one of the first women in this field of study.  She died of a stroke at age 49 in Ibadan, Nigeria.

 

1945 ~ Pierre Laval (b. June 28, 1883), Prime Minister of France.  He served as Prime Ministers from January 1931 until February 1932.  After the liberation of France during World War II, he was found guilty of treason and executed by firing squad at age 62.

 

1934 ~ Raymond Poincaré (b. Aug. 20, 1860), President of France.  He served as President from February 1913 until February 1920.  He died at age 74 in Paris, France.

 

1930 ~ Herbert Henry Dow (b. Feb. 26, 1866), Canadian-American businessman and founder of the Dow Chemical Company.  He was born in Belleville, Ontario, Canada.  He died at age 64 in Rochester, Minnesota.

 

1917 ~ Mata Hari (née Margaretha Geertruida Zelle; b. Aug. 7, 1876), Dutch dancer who was executed by firing squad for ostensibly spying for the German Empire during World War I.  She was executed as a spy at age 41.

 

1838 ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon (b. Aug. 14, 1802), English poet and novelist.  She is better known by her initials L.E.L.  She was born in Chelsea, London, England.  She died in Cape Coast, Ghana, likely by suicide at age 36.

 

1810 ~ Alfred Moore (b. May 21, 1755), Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.  He was nominated to the High Court by President John Adams.  He served on the Court from April 1800 until January 1804.  He replaced James Iredell on the Court.  He was succeeded by William Johnson.  He wrote only one opinion while on the Court.  At 4 feet, 5 inches, he remains the shortest Justice to serve on the Court.  He was born in New Hanover County, North Carolina, British America.  He died at age 55 in Bladen County, North Carolina.

 

1715 ~ Humphry Ditton (b. May 29, 1675), English mathematician.  He died at age 40.

 

1564 ~ Andreas Vesalius (b. Dec. 31, 1514), Flemish anatomist and physician who published a book entitled On the Structure of the Human Body, which was the first manual of human anatomy with clear and detailed illustrations.  He died at age 49.

 

1389 ~ Pope Urban VI (né Bartolomeo Prignano; b. 1318).  He served as Pope from April 1378 until his death on this date 11 years later.  The exact date of his birth is unknown.

 

1173 ~ Petronilla, Queen of Aragon (b. June 29, 1136).  She ruled Aragon from 1137 until she abdicated in 1164.  She became Queen of Aragon after her father abdicated.  She was married to Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona.  She was the last ruling member of the House of Jiménez.  She was the daughter of Ramon II, King of Aragon and Agnes of Aquitaine.  She died at age 37.


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