Monday, September 23, 2019

September 23

Birthdays:

1971 ~ Sean Spicer (né Sean Michael Spicer), White House Press Secretary.  He served in the Donald Trump administration from January 2017 until July 2017. 

1970 ~ Ani DiFranco (née Angela Maria DiFranco), American singer-songwriter.

1961 ~ William C. McCool (né William Cameron McCool; d. Feb. 1, 2003), American astronaut.  He was the commander of the Space Shuttle Columbia.  He died at age 41 when the Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry to the Earth.

1959 ~ Elizabeth Peña (née Elizabeth Maria Peña; d. Oct. 14, 2014), American actress.  She died 3 weeks after her 55th birthday.

1959 ~ Jason Alexander (né Jay Scott Greenspan), American actor best known for his role as George Costanza on Seinfeld.  He was born in Newark, New Jersey.

1949 ~ Bruce Springsteen (né Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen), American musician, known as The Boss.

1947 ~ Mary Kay Place, American actress.

1930 ~ Ray Charles (né Ray Charles Robinson; d. June 10, 2004), African-American musician.  He was blind from the age of 7.  He died of liver disease at age 73.

1927 ~ Dale Velzy (d. May 26, 2005), American surfboard maker who defined the “surfer dude lifestyle.”  He died at age 77.

1926 ~ John Coltrane (né John William Coltrane; d. July 17, 1967), American musician.  He died at age 40 of liver cancer.

1926 ~ André Cassagnes (d. Jan. 16, 2013), French toymaker and creator of the Etch-A-Sketch.  He died at age 86.

1920 ~ Mickey Rooney (né Joseph Yule, Jr.; d. Apr. 6, 2014), American child actor.  He died at age 93.

1917 ~ Knut Haugland (né Knut Magne Haugland, d. Dec. 25, 2009), Norwegian commando and resistance fighter during World War II who sailed on Kon-Tiki.  He died at age 92.

1915 ~ Clifford Shull (né Clifford Glennwood Shull, d. Mar. 31, 2001), American physicist and recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physics.  He died in Medford, Massachusetts at age 85.

1902 ~ Su Buqing (d. Mar. 17, 2003), Chinese mathematician.  He died at age 100.

1901 ~ Jaroslav Seifert (d. Jan. 10, 1986), Czech poet and journalist.  He was the recipient of the 1984 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He died at age 84.

1899 ~ Tom C. Clark (né Thomas Campbell Clark; d. June 13, 1977), Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.  He was nominated to the High Court by President Harry S Truman.  He served on the Supreme Court from August 1949 until June 1967.  He replaced Frank Murray on the Court and was succeeded by Thurgood Marshall.  Prior to joining the Supreme Court, he served as the 59th United States Attorney General under President Harry S Truman.  He died at age 77.

1899 ~ Louise Nevelson (née Leah Berliawsky; d. Apr. 17, 1988), Russian-born American sculptor.  She died at age 88.

1889 ~ Walter Lippmann (d. Dec. 14, 1974), American journalist and political commentator.  He died at age 85.

1880 ~ John Boyd Orr, 1st Baron Boyd-Orr (d. June 25, 1971), Scottish physician and recipient of the 1949 Nobel Peace Prize for his research in to nutrition and malnutrition.  He died at age 90.

1876 ~ Moshe Zvi Segal (d. Jan. 11, 1968), Israeli rabbi and Talmudic scholar.  He died at age 91.

1869 ~ Typhoid Mary Mallon (d. Nov. 11, 1938), Irish-American asymptomatic carrier of Typhoid fever.  She died at age 69.

1865 ~ Suzanne Valadon (d. Apr. 7, 1938), French model and artist.  She was also the mother of painter Maurice Utrillo.  She died at age 72.

1863 ~ Mary Church Terrell (née Mary Church; d. July 24, 1954), African-American civil rights activist and author.  She was one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree.  She died at age 90.

1851 ~ Ellen Hayes (née Ellen Amanda Hayes; d. Oct. 27, 1930), American mathematician and social activist.  She died in Wellesley, Massachusetts about a month after her 79th birthday.

1838 ~ Victoria Woodhull (née Victoria California Claflin; d. June 9, 1927), American suffragist.  In 1872, she ran for President, however, she was under the constitutionally mandated age for being President at the time.  In November 1853, she married Canning Woodhull.  She was barely 15 years old at the time.  Her husband was an alcoholic and a womanizer, so she divorced him, but kept his name because she had 2 children.  She died in England at age 88.

1816 ~ Elihu B. Washburne (né Elihu Benjamin Washburne; d. Oct. 23, 1887), 25th United States Secretary of State.  He served under President Ulysses S. Grant for 11 days, from March 5, 1869 until March 16, 1869.  He was born in Livermore, Maine.  He died in Chicago, Illinois a month after his 71st birthday.

1756 ~ John McAdam (né John Loudon McAdam; d. Nov. 26, 1836), Scottish engineer, road builder and inventor.  Without his invention would we still be driving on dirt roads?  He died at age 80.

1647 ~ Joseph Dudley (d. Apr. 2, 1720), Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.  He died at age 72.

1598 ~ Eleonora Gonzaga (d. June 27, 1655), Holy Roman Empress consort and Italian 2nd wife of Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor.  She died at age 56.

1215 ~ Kublai Khan (d. Feb. 18, 1294), Mongol Emperor and founder of the Yuan Dynasty.  He reigned from May 1260 until his death 34 years later.  He died at age 78.

480 BCE ~ Euripides (d. 406 BCE), The date ascribed to the birth of this Greek writer.  How do historians know?

Events that Changed the World:

2015 ~ Pope Francis began his first visit to the United States.  He had begun his tour of North America on September 19.

2014 ~ Former Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals head, Bruce Greenstein, was indicted on 9 charges of felony perjury.  In 2016, Jeff Landry (b. 1970) the newly elected Attorney General for the State of Louisiana, dropped all perjury charges.

1973 ~ Juan Perón (1895 ~ 1974) returned to power in Argentina.

1972 ~ Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos (1917 ~ 1989) announced the implementation of martial law.

1969 ~ The Chicago Eight trial began in Chicago.  The defendants [Abbie Hoffman (1936 ~ 1989), Jerry Rubin (1938 ~ 1994), David Dellinger (1915 ~ 2004), Tom Hayden (1939 ~ 2016), Rennie Davis (b. 1941), John Froines (b. 1939) and Lee Weiner (b. 1939)] had been charged with conspiracy to incite riots related to the anti-Vietnam war protests that occurred during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  Bobby Seale (b. 1936) had been one of the original Chicago Eight, but his trial was severed, leaving only 7 defendants in the September trial.  Although the defendants were found guilty of the charges, the convictions were ultimately overturned.

1962 ~ The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts opened in New York City.

1952 ~ Richard Nixon (Jan. 9, 1913 ~ Apr. 22, 1994) made his famous “Checkers” speech.

1941 ~ The Nazis began their experiment in mass murder with the first gas chambers at Auschwitz.

1932 ~ The Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd was renamed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

1911 ~ Earle Ovington (1879 ~ 1936), a pilot and assistant to Thomas Edison (1847 ~ 1931), piloted the first official air mail delivery.  He delivered a bag of mail from Garden City, New York to Mineola, New York.  The mail bag was dropped from the plane, but burst open upon landing on the ground, scattering all the mail!

1909 ~ The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux (1868 ~ 1927), was first published as a serialization in a French magazine.

1889 ~ The Nintendo company was founded in Japan.  The company originally made playing cards for a Japanese game.  A century later, the company was a leader in computer games.

1846 ~ Neptune was discovered by French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier (1811 ~ 1877), British astronomer John Couch Adams (1819 ~ 1892), and German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle (1812 ~ 1910).

1806 ~ The expedition led by Meriwether Lewis (1774 ~ 1809) and William Clark (1770 ~ 1838) returned to St. Louis after their 3-year trek to the Pacific Northwest.

1779 ~ A squadron commanded by John Paul Jones (1747 ~ 1792) on the Bonhomme Richard, defeated the British in a naval battle during the American Revolutionary War.

1642 ~ Harvard College held its first commencement exercises.

1338 ~ The Battle of Arnemuiden during the Hundred Years’ War was the first naval battle to involve artillery.

Good-Byes:

2018 ~ Sir Charles K. Kao (né Charles Kuen Kao; b. Nov. 4, 1933), Chinese-American and British physicist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics.  He died at age 84.

2018 ~ David Wolkowsky (b. Aug. 25, 1919), American developer who revitalized Key West.  He died about a month after his 99th birthday.

2013 ~ Dr. Ruth Patrick (née Ruth Myrtle Patrick; b. Nov. 26, 1907), American naturalist who stood guard over United States Rivers.  She received her Ph.D. in botany in the 1930s.  She died at age 105.

2009 ~ Paul B. Fay (né Paul Burgess Fay, Jr., b. July 8, 1918), acting United States Secretary of the Navy in November 1963.  He resigned after the assassination of President Kennedy.  He died at age 91.

1987 ~ Bob Fosse (né Robert Louis Fosse; b. June 23, 1927), American choreographer.  He died of a heart attack at age 60.

1973 ~ Pablo Neruda (né Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto; b. July 12, 1904), Chilean poet and recipient of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He died under mysterious circumstances at age 69.  In 2013, his body was exhumed to determine whether or not he had been murdered.  The results were indecisive.

1971 ~ James Waddell Alexander II (b. Sept. 19, 1888), American mathematician and topologist.  He died 4 days after his 84th birthday.

1939 ~ Sigmund Freud (né Sigismund Schlomo Freud; b. May 6, 1856), Austrian physician and founder of psychoanalysis.  He died at age 83.

1929 ~ Richard Adolf Zsigmondy (b. Apr. 1, 1865), Austrian chemist and recipient of the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research in colloids.  He died at age 64.

1900 ~ William Marsh Rice (b. Mar. 14, 1816), American businessman and founder of Rice University in Houston, Texas.  He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, but moved to Texas to seek his fortune, which he made in land investments.  He died at age 84.

1889 ~ Wilkie Collins (né William Wilkie Collins; b. Jan. 8, 1824), British author best known for his novels, The Woman in White and Moonstone.  He died of a stroke at age 65.

1877 ~ Urbain Le Verrier (né Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier; b. Mar. 11, 1811), French mathematician who is best known for his work with John Couch Adams and their discovery of Neptune.  They were credited with the planet’s discovery almost exactly 31 years to the day earlier!  He died at age 66.

1840 ~ Nathanael Emmons (b. Apr. 20, 1745), American Congregational minister and theologian.  He was born in East Haddam, Connecticut and died in Franklin, Massachusetts.  He died at age 95.

1830 ~ Elizabeth Monroe (née Elizabeth Jane Kortright; b. June 30, 1768), First Lady and wife of President James Monroe.  Due to health issues, however, many of the hosting duties fell to her daughter, Eliza Monroe Hay.  She died at age 62.

1657 ~ Joachim Jungius (b. Oct. 22, 1587), German mathematician and philosopher.  He died a month before his 70th birthday.

1463 ~ Giovanni de Comiso de’Medici (b. June 3, 1421), Italian noble.  He died at age 42.

1253 ~ Wenceslaus I of Bohemia (b. 1205), King of Bohemia from 1230 until his death in 1253.  He was known as One-Eyed

788 ~ Ælfwald I, King of Northumbria.  Little is known about him other than he reigned from 779 until his murder in 788.

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