Monday, November 20, 2017

November 20

Birthdays:

1971 ~ Joel McHale, American comedian and actor.

1956 ~ Bo Derek (née Mary Cathleen Collins), American actress best known for her role in the movie 10.

1948 ~ John Bolton, 25th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from August 2005 until December 2006.

1946 ~ Duane Allman (d. Oct. 29, 1971), American musician and member of The Allman Brothers Band.  He was killed less than a month before his 25th birthday in a motorcycle accident.

1946 ~ Judy Woodruff, American journalist and news anchor on public television.

1943 ~ Veronica Hamel, American actress.

1942 ~ Joseph Biden, 47th Vice President of the United States.  He served under President Barack Obama.

1939 ~ Dick Smothers, American comedian and half of the Smothers Brothers comedy team.

1932 ~ Richard Dawson (d. June 2, 2012), English-American actor, comedian and game-show host.  He is best known for his role in Hogan’s Heroes.  He died of esophageal cancer at age 79.

1925 ~ Robert Kennedy (d. June 6, 1968), American politician.  He was the 64th Attorney General of the United States.  He served during the presidency of his brother, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. He died from gunshot wounds sustained a day earlier.  He was 42 years old.

1925 ~ Maya Plisetskaya (d. May 2, 2015), Russian ballerina who stayed loyal to the USSR.  Her father was executed as an “enemy of the people” when she was 11, and her mother spent time in a labor camp, and although she was banned from touring in the West for fear that she would defect, Maya stayed in the Soviet Union because of her love of the Bolshoi Theater.  She was 89 years old.

1925 ~ George Barris (né George Salapatas, d. Nov. 5, 2015), American car designer who custom-made cars and is best known for creating the Batmobile.  He died 15 days before his 90th birthday.

1925 ~ Kay Ballard (née Catherine Gloria Balotta), American comedian and actress.

1924 ~ Benoît Mandelbrot (d. Oct. 14, 2010), Polish-born French mathematician.  He died at age 85.

1923 ~ Nadine Gordimer (d. July 13, 2014), South American writer and political activist.  She was the author who challenged apartheid.  She was the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature.  She was 90 years old.

1921 ~ Jim Garrison (né Earling Carothers Garrison, d. Oct. 21, 1992), District Attorney of Orleans Parish, Louisiana from 1962 ~ 1973.  He is best known for his investigations into the assassination of President John Kennedy.  He died in New Orleans a month before his 71st birthday.

1916 ~ Evelyn Keys (d. July 4, 2008), the American veteran actress who is best known for her role as Suellen O’Hara, sister of Scarlett O’Hara’s sister in Gone with the Wind.  She was born in Port Arthur, Texas.  She died at age 91.

1912 ~ Otto von Habsburg (d. July 4, 2011), the last crown prince of Austria-Hungary.  He died at age 98.

1910 ~ Willem Jacob van Stockum (d. June 10, 1944), Dutch mathematician.  He was killed at age 33 during a bombing raid during World War II, when his plane was hit by flak.

1908 ~ Alistair Cooke (d. Mar. 30, 2004), English-born journalist and longtime host of Masterpiece Theater.  He died at age 95.

1900 ~ Chester Gould (d. May 11, 1985), American cartoonist and creator of Dick Tracy.  He died at age 84.

1892 ~ James Collip (d. June 19, 1956), Canadian biochemist and co-discoverer of Insulin.  He died at age 72.

1889 ~ Edwin Hubble (d. Sept. 28, 1953), American astronomer.  The Hubble telescope is named in his honor.  He died at age 63.

1886 ~ Karl von Frisch (d. June 12, 1982), Austrian ethologist and zoologist.  He was the recipient of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  He studied the sensory perceptions of the honeybee.  He died at age 95.

1885 ~ Olive Dennis (d. Nov. 5, 1957), American engineer.  Many of her designs were innovations in the railroad industry.  She died 15 days before her 72nd birthday.

1874 ~ James Michael Curley (d. Nov. 12, 1958), 4-term Mayor of Boston and 53rd Governor of Massachusetts.  He died 8 days before his 84th birthday.

1866 ~ Kenesaw M. Landis (d. Nov. 25, 1944), American Federal judge and first commissioner of professional baseball.  He had also served as a federal district court judge for the United States District Court of Northern Illinois.  He is best remembered for his handling of the Black Sox scandal, which involved eight Chicago White Sox players who conspired to loose the 1919 World Series.  He died 5 days after his 78th birthday.

1858 ~ Selma Lagerlöf (d. Mar. 16, 1940), Swedish author and recipient of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Literature.  She was the first female to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.  She died at age 81.

1841 ~ Victor D’Hondt (d. May 30, 1901), Belgian mathematician.  He died at age 59.

1761 ~ Pope Pius VIII (né Francesco Saverio Castiglioni, d. Nov. 30, 1830).  He was Pope for a year and a half, from March 31, 1829 until his death on November 30 1830.  He died 10 days after his 69th birthday.

Events that Changed the World:

1992 ~ A fire in Windsor Castle, causing severe damage to the castle and property.

1985 ~ Microsoft Windows 1.0 was released to the public.

1980 ~ A misplaced Texaco oil probe drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, causing Lake Peigneur in Louisiana to drain into the salt deposit.

1977 ~ Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (1918 ~ 1981) became the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel.  He met with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (1913 ~ 1992) and spoke before the Israeli Knesset in an effort to seek a permanent peace agreement.

1974 ~ The United States Department of Justice filed an anti-trust suit against AT&T.  The suit later was the reason for the breakup of AT&T and its Bell Systems.

1969 ~ The public became aware of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam after the Cleveland, Ohio newspaper, The Plain Dealer, published explicit photographs of dead villagers.

1968 ~ 78 miners were killed in an explosion at the Consolidated Coal Company’s Number 9 mine in Farmington, West Virginia.

1962 ~ The Cuban missile crisis ended after the Soviet Union agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba.

1947 ~ Princess Elizabeth (b. 1926) of the United Kingdom married Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten (b. 1921) at Westminster Abbey in London, England.  After his marriage to Elizabeth, he became known as the Duke of Edinburgh.

1945 ~ The post-World War II Nuremberg Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals began at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg.

1820 ~ A sperm whale attacked a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts off the western coast of South America.  This event gave novelist Herman Melville the inspiration for Moby Dick, which was published 30 years later.

1789 ~ New Jersey became the first State of the Union to ratify the Bill of Rights.

1194 ~ Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI (1165 ~ 1197) conquered Palermo.

Good-Bye:

2014 ~ Doña María del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva, 18th Duchess of Alba (b. Mar. 28, 1926).  She died at age 88.

2011 ~ Theodore Joseph Forstmann (b. Feb. 13, 1940), American pioneer of private equity.  He died at age 71.

2010 ~ Chalmers Johnson (b. Aug. 6, 1931), American scholar who decried an empire.  He died at age 79.

2009 ~ Lester Shubin (b. Sept. 27, 1925), American chemist who saved lives with Kevlar.  He died at age 84.

2009 ~ Charis Wilson (née Helen Charis Wilson, b. May 4, 1914), American model who inspired photographer Edward Wilson.  She died at age 95.

2007 ~ Ian Smith (b. Apr. 8, 1919), Zimbabwean politician and Prime Minister of Rhodesia.  He died at age 88.

2006 ~ Zoia Ceauşescu (b. Feb. 28, 1949), Romanian mathematician.  She was the daughter of Communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena.  She died of lung cancer at age 57.

2006 ~ Robert Altman (b. Feb. 20, 1925), American film director.  He died at age 81.

1975 ~ Francisco Franco (b. Dec. 4, 1892), Spanish dictator.  He died 14 days before his 83rd birthday.

1954 ~ Clyde Vernon Cessna (b. Dec. 5, 1879), American aviation designer and founder of the Cessna Aircraft Corporation.  He died 15 days before his 75th birthday.

1945 ~ Francis William Aston (b. Sept. 1, 1877), British chemistry and 1922 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  He died at age 68.

1934 ~ Willem de Sitter (b. May 6, 1872), Dutch mathematician and astronomer.  He died at age 62.

1925 ~ Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom (b. Dec. 1, 1844) and wife of King Edward VII.  She was of the royal family of Denmark.  She died 11 days before her 81st birthday.

1914 ~ Vinnie Ream (née Lavina Ellen Ream Hoxie, b. Sept. 25, 1847), American sculptor.  She is best known for the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the United States Capitol rotunda.  She was 18 years old when she received the commission for this statue.  She died at age 67.

1910 ~ Count Leo Tolstoy (b. Sept. 9, 1828), Russian author.  He is best known for his epic novels such as War and Peace and Anna Karenina.  He died at age 82.

1908 ~ Georgy Voronoy (b. Apr. 28, 1868), Russian mathematician.  He died at age 40.

1894 ~ Anton Rubinstein (b. Nov. 28, 1829), Russian pianist and composer.  He died 8 days before his 65th birthday.

1888 ~ Nathaniel Currier (b. Mar. 27, 1813), American illustrator, who worked with James Ives to create lithographs of current events and life in the mid-1800s America.  Together James Ives and Nathaniel Currier co-founded Currier and Ives.  Curried was from Massachusetts.  He died at age 75.

1856 ~ Farkas Bolyai (b. Feb. 9, 1775), Hungarian mathematician.  He died at age 81.

1788 ~ Francesco Cetti (b. Aug. 9, 1726), Italian priest and mathematician.  He died at age 52

1764 ~ Christian Goldbach (b. Mar. 18, 1690), Prussian mathematician.  He died at age 74.

1737 ~ Caroline of Ansbach (b. Mar. 1, 1683), Queen of Great Britain.  She was the wife of King George II.  She died at age 54.

1593 ~ Hans Bol (b. Dec. 16, 1534), Flemish artist.  He died 26 days before his 48th birthday.

1316 ~ King John I of France (b. Nov. 15, 1316).  His father had died before he was born, thus he became king upon his birth.  He died, however, 5 days after his birth.

869 ~ Edmund the Martyr (b. 841), English king.  The date of his birth is not known.

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