November 12

Birthdays:

1982 ~ Anne Hathaway, American actress.

1980 ~ Ryan Gosling, Canadian-American actor.

1968 ~ Sammy Sosa (né Samuel Kevin Peralta Sosa), Dominican baseball player.

1970 ~ Tonya Harding, American figure skater.  She is best known for her involvement in the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, a fellow skater.

1961 ~ Nadia Comӑneci, Romanian gymnast.

1936 ~ Heiner Zieschang (d. Apr. 5, 2004), German mathematician.  His field of mathematics was topology.  He died at age 67.

1934 ~ Charles Manson, American cult leader and convicted murderer.

1929 ~ Grace Kelly (d. Sept. 14, 1982), American actress and Princess of Monaco.  Upon her marriage, she became the Princess consort of Monaco.  She died at age 52 in a car accident.

1927 ~ Yutaka Taniyama (d. Nov. 17, 1958), Japanese mathematician.  He committed suicide 5 days after his 31^st birthday.

1922 ~ Jim Bellows (b. Mar. 6, 2009), American scrappy newspaper editor who loved a good fight.  He died of Alzheimer’s disease at age 86.

1917 ~ Jo Stafford (d. July 16, 2008), the American pop singer who was a World War II favorite.  She died at age 90.

1908 ~ Harry Blackmun (d. Mar. 4, 1999), Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.  He was appointed to the High Court by President Richard Nixon.  He served on the court from June 1970 until August 1994.  He is best known as being the author of Roe v. Wade.  He died at age 90.

1889 ~ DeWitt Wallace (d. Mar. 30, 1981), American publisher and co-founder along with his wife, Lila Wallace, of Reader’s Digest.  He died at age 91.

1866 ~ Sun Yat-sen (d. Mar. 12, 1925), Chinese revolutionary and politician.  He was the 1^st President of the Republic of China.  He died at age 58.

1842 ~ John Strutt, 3^rd Baron Rayleigh (d. June 30, 1919), English physicist and recipient of the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics.  He died at age 76.

1840 ~ Auguste Rodin (d. Nov. 17, 1917), French sculptor.  He died 5 days after his 77^th birthday.

1815 ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton (d. Oct. 26, 1902), American feminist and suffragette.  She died 17 days before her 87^th birthday.

1790 ~ Letitia Christian Tyler (d. Sept. 10, 1842), First Lady of the United States and first wife of President John Tyler.  She died at age 51 while her husband was in Office, thereby becoming the first wife of a President to die while in office.

1746 ~ Jacques Charles (d. Apr. 7, 1823), French physicist and mathematician.  He died at age 76.

1606 ~ Jeanne Mance (d. June 18, 1673), French-Canadian nurse and founder of the Hôtel-Dieu do Montréal.  She died at age 66.

Events that Changed the World:

1999 ~ A 7.2 earthquake struck in Düzce, Turkey killing nearly 900 people.

1997 ~ Ramzi Yousef (b. 1968) was found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

1990 ~ Crown Prince Akihito (b. 1933) was formally installed as Emperor of Japan, becoming the 125^th Japanese monarch.

1990 ~ Sir Timothy Bernes-Lee (b. 1955), best known as being the inventor of the World Wide Web, first published a proposal for the World Wide Web.

1979 ~ President Jimmy Carter (b. 1924) ordered that all oil imports into the United States from Iran be stopped as his response to the Iran Hostage Crisis.

1969 ~ Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh (b. 1937) first reported on the My Lai Massacre, in which American soldiers committed the mass murder of over 400 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam.  Most of the victims were women and children.

1954 ~ Ellis Island closed after having processed over 20 million immigrants since 1892.

1942 ~ The Navel Battle of Guadalcanal between Japanese and American forces began during World War II.  The battle lasted for three days.  American forces prevailed.

1936 ~ The San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge opened to the public.

1933 ~ Hugh Gray (1916 ~ 2002) took the first known photographs of the Loch Ness Monster.

1927 ~ Leon Trotsky (1879 ~ 1940) was expelled from the Soviet Communist Party.  Joseph Stalin (1878 ~ 1953), therefore, gained control of the Soviet Union.

1918 ~ Austria became a republic.

1912 ~ The bodies of Robert Scott and his men were found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

1905 ~ Norway held a referendum in favor of a monarchy over a republic.

1555 ~ The English Parliament re-established Catholicism as the state religion.

1439 ~ Plymouth, England became the first town incorporated by the English Parliament.

Good-Byes:

2014 ~ Valery Senderov (b. Mar. 17, 1945), Russian dissident and mathematician.  He died at age 69.

2011 ~ Evelyn Lauder (b. Aug. 12, 1936), American breast cancer survivor who campaigned with pink ribbons.  She was the daughter-in-law of cosmetics magnate Estée Lauder.  She died at age 75.

2010 ~ Henryk Górecki (b. Dec. 6, 1933), Polish composer who shed dissonance and found success.  He died of complications from a lung infection 24 days before his 77^th birthday.

2010 ~ Theodore Kheel (b. May 9, 1914), American labor lawyer with a knack for compromise.  He was 96 years old.

2007 ~ Ira Levin (b. Aug. 27, 1929), American author.  He is best known for such novels as The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby.  He died at age 78.

2000 ~ Leah Rabin (b. Apr. 8, 1928), wife of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.  She died of lung cancer at age 72.

1998 ~ Sally Shlaer (b. Dec. 3, 1938), American mathematician.  She died 21 days before her 60^th birthday.

1994 ~ Wilma Rudolph (b. June 23, 1940), American runner.  She died at age 54 of cancer.

1993 ~ H.R. Haldemann (né Harry Robbins Haldemann, b. Oct. 27, 1926), American politician and 4^th White House Chief of Staff.  He served under President Nixon from January 1969 until April 1973.  He was involved in the Watergate scandal cover-up.  He died of abdominal cancer 16 days after his 67^th birthday.

1990 ~ Eve Arden (b. Apr. 30, 1908), American actress.  She died at age 82 of heart disease.

1981 ~ William Holden (né William Franklin Beedle, Jr., b. Apr. 17, 1918), American actor.  He is best known for his role in Network.  He died at age 63.

1958 ~ James Michael Curley (b. Nov. 20, 1874), 4-term Mayor of Boston and 53^rd Governor of Massachusetts.  He died 8 days before his 84^th birthday.

1944 ~ George David Birkhoff (b. Mar. 21, 1884), American mathematician.  He died at age 60.

1944 ~ Otto Blumenthal (b. July 20, 1876), German mathematician.  He died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp at age 68.

1926 ~ Joseph Gurney Cannon (b. May 7, 1836), 40^th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.  He served in this office from November 1903 until March 1911, during the terms of Presidents Taft and Roosevelt.  He was a member of Congress from Illinois.  He died at age 90.

1916 ~ Percival Lowell (b. Mar. 13, 1855), American astronomer and mathematician.  He was born in Boston, Massachusetts.  He died at age 61.

1857 ~ Manuel Oribe (b. Aug. 26, 1792), 2^nd Constitutional President of Uruguay.  He was in Office from March 1835 until October 1838.  He died at age 65.

1793 ~ Jean Sylvain Bailly (b. Sept. 15, 1736), French mathematician and 1^st Mayor of Paris.  He was an early leader in the French revolution, but he refused to testify against Marie Antoinette, thus he was arrested and ultimately guillotined.  He was age 57 at the time of his execution.

1094 ~ King Duncan II of Scotland (b. 1060).  The exact date of his birth is not known.

607 ~ Pope Boniface III (b. 504).  He was Pope from February 19, 607 until his death 9 months later.  The date of his birth is not known, but he is believed to have been about 67 at the time of his death.