September 13

1951 ~ Jean Smart, American actress best known for her role as Charlene on Designing Women.

1944 ~ Jacqueline Bisset, English actress.

1940 ~ Óscar Arias, President of Costa Rica and recipient of the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize.

1939 ~ Richard Kiel (d. Sept. 10, 2014), American gentle giant who became a Bond villain.  He was the seven-foot-two actor who was best known for his role as Jaws in the 1977 James Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me.  He died of a heart attack three days before his 75^th birthday.

1939 ~ Larry Speakes (d. Jan. 10, 2014), American journalist and 16^thmWhite House Press Secretary.  He served under President Ronald Reagan.  He was technically the acting press secretary because James Brady, who had been shot during the assassination attempt on President Reagan, retained his position and title even though he was unable to perform those duties.  He died of Alzheimer’s disease at age 74.

1938 ~ Judith Martin, American etiquette writer.

1936 ~ Chuck Allen (né Charles Lee Allen, d. Feb. 14, 2011), American surfing coach turned snowboard evangelist.  He was 74 years old.

1925 ~ Mel Tormé (né Melvin Howard Tormé, d. June 5, 1999), American singer, composer and actor.  He was known as “The Velvet Fog”.  He died of a stroke at age 73.

1925 ~ Harley Flanders (d. July 26, 2013), American mathematician.  He died at age 87.

1924 ~ Maurice Jarre (b. Mar. 28, 2009), French composer.  Many of his compositions were in movies.  He was 84 years old.

1922 ~ Yma Sumac (née Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo, d. Nov. 1, 2008), Peruvian chanteuse who trilled like a bird.  This is the accepted date of her birth, however, there is some controversy and some records note her birthday as being September 10, 1923.  She was about 86 at the time of her death.

1919 ~ George Weidenfeld, Baron Weidenfeld (d. Jan. 20, 2016), British Jewish refugee who became a publishing legend.  He was born in Vienna, Austria, but escaped to England during World War II.  He died at age 96.

1916 ~ Roald Dahl (d. Nov. 23, 1990), English author, best known for his children’s stories, James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  His first wife was actress Patricia Neal.  He died at age 74.

1903 ~ Claudette Colbert (née Emilie Chauchion, d. 1996, d. July 30, 1996), French actress.  She died at age 92.

1894 ~ J. B. Priestley (né John Boynton Priestley, d. Aug. 14, 1984), English playwright and novelist.  He died a month before his 90^th birthday.

1887 ~ Leopold Ružička (d. Sept 26, 1976), Croatian chemist and recipient of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  He died two weeks after his 89^th birthday.

1886 ~ Sir Robert Robinson (d. Feb. 8, 1975), English chemist and recipient of the 1947 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  He died at age 75.

1885 ~ Wilhelm Baschke (d. Mar. 17, 1962), Austrian-German mathematician.  He died at age 76.

1876 ~ Sherwood Anderson (d. Mar. 8, 1941), American author.  He is best known for his novel Winesburg, Ohio.  He died in Panama at age 64.

1873 ~ Constantin Carathéodory (d. Feb. 2, 1950), Greek mathematician.  He died at age 76.

1863 ~ Arthur Henderson (d. Oct. 20, 1935), British politician and recipient of the 1934 Nobel Peace Prize.  He died at age 72.

1860 ~ John J. Pershing (d. July 15, 1948), American army general.  He died at age 87.

1857 ~ Milton S. Hershey (d. Oct. 13, 1945), American confectioner and founder of the Hershey Chocolate Company.  He died a month after his 88^th birthday.

1851 ~ Walter Reed (d. Nov. 22, 1902), American surgeon who studied yellow fever.  He died at age 51 following an infection from a ruptured appendix.

1819 ~ Clara Schumann (née Clara Josephine Wieck, d. May 20, 1896), German pianist and composer.  She died at age 76.

1601 ~ Jan Brueghel the Younger (d. Sept. 1, 1678), Flemish painter.  He died 12 days before his 77^th birthday.

1475 ~ Cesare Borgia (d. Mar. 12, 1507), Italian politician and cardinal.  He was the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI and his mistress Vannozza die Cattanei, and brother of Lucrezia Borgia.  He became the first cardinal to resign, afterwhich he married Charlotte of Albfet.  He was assassinated at age 31.

Events that Changed the World:

2015 ~ Rosh HaShanah began at sunset.

2008 ~ Hurricane Ike made landfall along the Texas coast near Galveston Island.

2001 ~ Civilian airplane traffic resumed in the United States following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

1993 ~ Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1922 ~ 1995) and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat (1929 ~ 2004) signed the Oslo Accords, which granted limited Palestinian autonomy.

1971 ~ State police and National Guardsmen stormed Attica Prison in New York State to end prison riots.  The riots had raged for 4 days.

1953 ~ Nikita Khrushchev (1894 ~ 1971) was appointed as the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1948 ~ Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1995) was elected Senator from Maine, becoming the first woman to serve in both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate.

1899 ~ Henry Bliss (b. 1830) became the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident.  He was a pedestrian and was struck by a taxi as he exited a street car.

1898 ~ Hannibal Goodwin (1822 ~ 1900), an American Episcopal priest and inventor, patented celluloid photographic film.

1848 ~ Phineas Gage (1823 – 1860), a railroad worker from Vermont, was injured when a 3-foot iron rod was driven through his head during rock blasting while working on the railway.  He survived the injury, but suffered behavioral and personality changes as a result.  His injury and survival, however, allowed doctors to study the brain and its functions.

1759 ~ At the Battle of the Plains of Abraham near Quebec City, the British defeated the French in the French and Indian War.

1541 ~ John Calvin (1509 ~ 1564) returned to Geneva, Switzerland and to reform the Protestant church which became known as Calvinism.

335 ~ Emperor Constantine the Great was said to have consecrated the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on this date.

Good-Byes:

2015 ~ Moses Malone (b. Mar. 23, 1955) American basketball player.  He was the NBA star who mastered the rebound.  He was 60 years old.

2011 ~ Walter Bonatti (b. June 22, 1930), Italian mountain climber plagued by an untruth.  In a 1954 expedition to climb K2, two other older climbers alleged that Bonatti had emptied their oxygen tanks to prevent them from reaching the top.  It was not until 2004 that the other climbers came clean and acknowledged that Bonatti had done nothing wrong on the climb.  He died at age 81.

2006 ~ Ann Richards (né Dorothy Ann Willis Richards, b. Sept. 1, 1933), 45^th Governor of Texas.  She served as Governor from January 1991 through January 1995.  She died of esophageal cancer 12 days after her 73^rd birthday.

2004 ~ Luis E. Miramontes (b. Mar. 16, 1925), Mexican inventor and best known for being the co-inventor of the chemical used in birth-control pills.  He died at age 79.

1989 ~ George Wallace (b. Aug. 25, 1919), 45^th Governor of Alabama and segregationist.  He later renounced his segregationist ideas.  After an assassination attempt in 1972, which left him paralyzed, he was wheelchair bound for the remainder of his life.  He died 19 days after his 79^th birthday.

1996 ~ Tupac Shakur (né Lesane Parish Crooks, b. June 16, 1971), American rapper and actor.  He was killed in a drive-by shooting at age 25.

1977 ~ Leopold Stokowski (b. Apr. 18, 1882), Polish-born conductor.  He died of a heart attack at age 95.

1949 ~ Schack August Steenberg Krogh (b. Nov. 15, 1874), recipient of the 1920 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in the discovery of the mechanism of the regulation of capillaries in skeletal muscles.  He died at age 74.

1858 ~ Eugene Foss (b. Sept. 24, 1939), 45^th Governor of Massachusetts.  He served as Governor from January 1911 until January 1914.  He died 11 days before his 81^st birthday.

1881 ~ Ambrose Burnside (b. May 23, 1824), Union General during the American Civil War.  He was also the 30^th Governor of Rhode Island from May 1866 until May 1869.  His distinctive style of facial hair became known as Sideburns, in his honor.  He died of a heart attack at age 57.

1810 ~ William Cushing (d. Mar. 1, 1732.), Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.  He was appointed to the High Court by President George Washington.  He was one of the original six associate justices on the Supreme Court.  He served on the Court from September 1789 until his death at age 78.

1759 ~ James Wolfe (b. Jan. 2, 1727), English general.  He was killed during the Battle of the Plains of Abraham at age 31.

81 ~ Titus (b. Dec. 30, 39), the traditional date ascribed to the death of this Roman Emperor.  He is believed to have been 41 at the time of his death.