February 16

Birthdays:

1959 ~ John McEnroe, American tennis player.

1958 ~ Ice-T (né Tracy Lauren Marrow), American rapper and actor.

1957 ~ LeVar Burton (né Levardis Robert Martyn Burton, Jr.), American actor best known for his portrayal of Kunta Kinte in the television miniseries Roots.

1954 ~ Margaux Hemingway (d. July 1, 1996), American actress and model.  She was the granddaughter of writer Ernest Hemingway.  She committed suicide at age 42.

1941 ~ Kim Jong-il (d. Dec. 17, 2011), 2^nd Supreme Leader of North Korea.  He died at age 70.

1935 ~ Sonny Bono (né Salvatore Phillip Bono, d. Jan. 5, 1998), American singer and half of the duo Sonny and Cher.  In his later life, he became a politician.  He was killed in a freak skiing accident.  He was 62 years old.

1935 ~ Stephen Gaskin (d. July 1, 2014), American hippy visionary who founded a lasting commune.  He died at age 79.

1932 ~ Aharon Appelfeld (d. Jan. 4, 2018), Israeli author and Holocaust survivor.  He died at age 85.

1921 ~ Esther Bubley (d. Mar. 16, 1998), American photographer who specialized in photographs of everyday life in America.  She died of cancer a month after her 77^th birthday.

1921 ~ Hua Guofeng (d. Aug. 20, 2008), Chinese premiere who ushered in the post-Mao era.  He died at age 87.

1920 ~ Anna Mae Violet McCabe Hays (d. Jan. 7, 2018), American army nurse who broke the military’s brass ceiling.  She was the first woman to be promoted to the rank of General.  She died of a heart attack at age 97.

1918 ~ Patty Andrews (d. Jan. 30, 2013), last surviving member of the Andrews Sisters vocal trio.  She died 17 days before her 95^th birthday.

1909 ~ Hugh Beaumont (né Eugene Hugh Beaumont, d. May 14, 1982), American actor best known for his portrayal of Ward Cleaver on the sit-com Leave It to Beaver, which ran from 1957- 1963.  He died of a heart attack at age 73 while visiting his son in Germany.

1909 ~ Richard McDonald (d. July 14, 1998), American businessman and co-founder along with his brother Maurice James McDonald (1902 ~ 1971) of McDonald’s.  Richard was born and died in New Hampshire.  He was 89 at the time of his death.

1903 ~ Edgar John Bergen (b. Sept. 30, 1978), American actor and ventriloquist.  He was the father of actress Candice Bergen.  He died at age 75.

1898 ~ Katharine Cornell (d. June 9, 1974), American actress.  She died in Tisbury, Massachusetts at age 81.

1843 ~ Henry Martyn Leland (d. Mar. 26, 1832), American inventor and automotive entrepreneur.  He founded the luxury automobiles of Cadillac and Lincoln.  He was born in Vermont.  He died at age 89.

1838 ~ Henry Brooks Adams (d. Mar. 27, 1918), American historian and novelist.  He was born in Boston, Massachusetts.  He died at age 80.

1812 ~ Henry Wilson (né Jeremiah Jones Colbath, d. Nov. 22, 1875), Vice President of the United States.  He served as President Ulysses S. Grant’s second Vice President from March 1873 until his death in November 1875.  He died in Office.  He was born in Farmington, New Hampshire.  When he was 21, he legally changed his name to Henry Wilson.  He died of a stroke at age 63.

1786 ~ Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (d. June 23, 1859).  She died at age 73.

1698 ~ Pierre Bouguer (d. Aug. 15, 1758), French mathematician.  He died at age 60.

1514 ~ Rheticus (né Georg Joachim de Porris, d. Dec. 4, 1576), Austrian mathematician and astronomer.  He died at age 60.

1304 ~ Jayaatu Khan Tugh Temür (d. Sept. 2, 1332), Chinese Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty.  He died at age 28.

1036 ~ Emperor Yingzong of Song (d. Jan. 25, 1067), 5^th Emperor of the Song Dynasty.  He was emperor from May 1063 until his death.  He died 22 days before his 35^th birthday.

Events that Changed the World:

2015 ~ President’s Day observed in the United States.

2010 ~ Mardi Gras.

2006 ~ The US Army decommissioned the last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH).

2005 ~ The Kyoto Protocol, which set binging obligations on industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, became effective.

1987 ~ The trial of accused Nazi guard John Demjanjuk (1920 ~ 2012), known as Ivan the Terrible at the Treblinka extermination camp, began in Jerusalem, Israel.

1985 ~ Hezbollah was founded.

1968 ~ The first 911 emergency telephone system went into operation.  It was in Haleyville, Alabama.

1959 ~ Fidel Castro (1926 ~ 2016) was sworn in as Prime Minister of Cuba following the overthrowing of Fugencio Batista (1901 ~ 1973) on January 1^st.

1937 ~ Wallace Carothers (1898 ~ 1937) received a US Patent for nylon.

1933 ~ The Blaine Act was passed by Congress, which ended Prohibition in the United States.  The Act would become effective with the adoption of the 21^st Amendment to the United States Constitution in December 1933.

1923 ~ Howard Carter (1874 ~ 1939) unsealed the burial chamber of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

1874 ~ The Silver Dollar became legal tender in the United States.

1852 ~ The Studebaker Brothers wagon company was established.  This was a precursor of the automobile manufacturer.

1742 ~ Spencer Compton, 1^st Earl of Wilmington (b. 1673), became the British Prime Minister.  He is considered to be Britain’s second Prime Minister, after Sir Robert Walpole.  Compton served in this capacity for just a little over a year.  The exact date of his birth is not known, but he is believed to have been age 70 at the time of his death.

Good-Byes:

2016 ~ Boutros Boutros-Ghali (b. Nov. 14, 1922), Egyptian politician and diplomat.  He served as the 6^th Secretary General of the United Nations.  He died at age 93.

2015 ~ Lesley Gore (né Lesley Sue Goldstein, b. May 2, 1946), American feminist icon and singer best known for her song, It’s My Party.  She died of lung cancer at age 68.

2011 ~ Santi Santamaria (né Jaume Santamaria i Puig, b. July 26, 1957), Spanish Catalan chef who denigrated cooking’s avant-garde.  He died at age 53 of a heart attack.

2009 ~ Konrad Danneberg (b. Aug. 5, 1912), German-born V-2 rocketeer who later worked for NASA.  He was on of the last of the 118 German engineers who came to the United States with Nazi rocket wizard Werner von Braun.  He died at age 96.

2001 ~ William Howell Masters (b. Dec. 27, 1915), American gynecologist and pioneer in human sexuality, along with his wife Virginia E. Johnson (1925 ~ 2013).  He died of Parkinson’s disease at age 85.

1997 ~ Chien-Shiung Wu (b. May 31, 1912), Chinese-American physicist and recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics.  She died at age 84.

1996 ~ Pat Brown (né Edmund Gerald Brown, Sr. d. Apr. 21, 1905), 32^nd Governor of California.  He died at age 90.

1990 ~ Keith Haring (b. May 4, 1958), American graphical artist.  He died of AIDS at age 31.

1977 ~ Rózsa Péter (b. Feb. 17, 1905), Hungarian mathematician.  She is known as the Mother of Recursion Theory.  She died 1 day before her 72^nd birthday.

1932 ~ Ferdinand Buisson (b. Dec. 20, 1841), French pacifist and recipient of the 1927 Nobel Peace Prize.  He died at age 90.

1924 ~ Henry Bacon (b. Nov. 28, 1866), American architect who designed the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  He died of cancer at age 57.

1907 ~ Giosuè Carducci (né Giosuè Alessandro Guiseppe Carducci, b. July 27, 1835), Italian poet and recipient of the 1906 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He died at age 71.

1899 ~ Félix Faure (b. Jan. 30, 1841), President of France.  He served as President from January 1895 until his death in February 1899.  He died in Office of apoplexy just 17 days after his 58^th birthday.

1862 ~ William Pennington (b. May 4, 1796), American politician.  He served as the Speaker of the House of Representatives from Feb. 1860 until March 1861.  He had previously served as the Governor of New Jersey from October 1837 until October 1843.  He died at age 65.

1531 ~ Johannes Stöffler (b. Dec. 10, 1452), German mathematician.  He died at age 88.