Friday, December 4, 2020

December 4

Birthdays:

1966 ~ Fred Armisen (né Fereydun Robert Armisen), American actor.  He is best known for being a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2002 until 2013.  He was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

 

1964 ~ Marisa Tomei, American actress.  She was born in Brooklyn, New York.

 

1951 ~ Patricia Wettig (née Patricia Anne Wettig), American actress.  She is best known for her role as Nancy Weston on the television drama Thirtysomething.  She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

 

1949 ~ Jeff Bridges (né Jeffrey Leon Bridges), American actor.  He is the son of Lloyd Brides and brother of Beau Bridges.  He was born in Los Angeles, California.

 

1945 ~ Roberta Bondar, Canadian neurologist who became the first Canadian woman to travel into space when she joined the astronauts on the Space Shuttle Discovery in January 1992.  She was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada.

 

1940 ~ Gary Gilmore (né Faye Robert Coffman; d. Jan. 17, 1977), American murderer who is known for being the first person to be executed after the United States Supreme Court deemed that the states’ death-penalty statutes were constitutional.  Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah.  Norman Mailer wrote an account of Gilmore’s story in the novel, Executioner’s Song.  He was 36 years old at the time of his execution.

 

1937 ~ Max Baer, Jr. (né Maximilian Adalbert Baer, Jr.), American actor best known for his role as Jethro Bodine onThe Beverly Hillbillies.  He is the son of boxer Max Baer.  He was born in Oakland, California.

 

1935 ~ Paul O’Neill (né Paul Henry O’Neill; d. Apr. 18, 2020), 72nd United States Secretary of the Treasury.  He served under President George W. Bush from January 2001 through December 2002.  He was proceeded by Lawrence Summers and was succeeded by John W. Snow.  He was born in St. Louis, Missouri.  He died at age 84 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

 

1933 ~ Wink Martindale (né Winston Conrad Martindale), American game show host.  He was born in Jackson, Tennessee.

 

1923 ~ Charles Keating (né Charles Humphrey Keating, Jr.; d. Mar. 31, 2014), American attorney and businessman.  He is best known for his role in the Savings and Loan scandal of the late 1980s.  In 1991, he was charged with 17 counts of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy.  He was given a 10-year prison sentence for his crimes.  He died at age 90.

 

1921 ~ Deanna Durbin (née Edna Mae Durbin; d. Apr. 17, 2013), Canadian Hollywood child star who turned her back on fame.  She died at age 91.

 

1918 ~ Robert Ettinger (né Robert Chester Wilson Ettinger; d. July 23, 2011), American cryonics pioneer who fought death with deep freezers.  He is known as the Father of Cryogenics.  He was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  He died at age 92 in Detroit, Michigan.

 

1914 ~ Claude Renoir (d. Sept. 5, 1993), French cinematographer and son of impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir.  He died at age 79.

 

1908 ~ Alfred Hershey (né Alfred Day Hershey; d. May 22, 1997), American biochemist and recipient of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  He did extensive research on bacteriophages.  He is best known for showing that DNA is the genetic material of life.  He died at age 88.

 

1892 ~ Francisco Franco (d. Nov. 20, 1975), Spanish dictator.  He died 14 days before his 83rd birthday.

 

1878 ~ Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia (d. June 13, 1918), younger brother of Tsar Nicholas II.  He was the first Romanov to be murdered by the Bolsheviks.  He was 39 years old at the time of his death.

 

1875 ~ Rainer Marie Rilke (né René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Marie Rilke; d. Dec. 29, 1926), Austrian author.  He died of leukemia 25 days after his 51st birthday.

 

1875 ~ Joe Corbett (né Joseph Aloysius Corbett; d. May 2, 1945), American baseball player.  He was the younger brother of boxer James Corbett.  He died at age 69.

 

1865 ~ Edith Cavell (née Edith Louisa Cavell; d. Oct. 12, 1915), English nurse.  She served as a nurse in World War I and is known for caring for Allied soldiers who had escaped from German-occupied Belgium during the War.  She was arrested for treason and found guilty by court-marshal for aiding Allied soldiers escape.  She was executed by a German firing squad.  She was 49 years old.

 

1860 ~ Lillian Russell (née Helen Louise Leonard; d. June 6, 1922), American actress.  The year of her birth is sometimes listed as 1861.  She was born in Clinton, Iowa.  She died at age 60 or 61 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

 

1835 ~ Samuel Butler (d. June 18, 1902), English author and poet.  He died at age 66.

 

1798 ~ Jules Armand Dufaure (d. June 28, 1881), French politician.  He served several terms as French Prime Minister.  He died at age 82.

 

1795 ~ Thomas Carlyle (d. Feb. 5, 1881), Scottish writer, historian, and mathematician.  He died at age 85.

 

1777 ~ Juliette Récamier (née Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaïde Bernard; d. May 11, 1849), French businesswoman.  The chaise lounge, or réclamier is named after her.  She died at age 71.

 

1585 ~ John Cotton (d. Dec. 23, 1652), English-American minister who served in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  He died 19 days after his 67th birthday.

 

Events that Changed the World:

 

2017 ~ The Thomas Fire ignited in California.  It became the largest wildfire in California and burned over 440 square miles in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties.

 

2006 ~ Six black teens assaulted a white teenager in Jena, Louisiana.  They were subsequently arrested and convicted of assault.

 

1992 ~ United States President George H.W. Bush (1924 ~ 2018) sent over 28,000 American soldiers to Somalia to assist in the Somali Civil War.

 

1991 ~ American Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson (b. 1947) was released after being held captive as a hostage in Beirut for 6 years and 8 months.  He was the longest-held American hostage in Lebanon.

 

1991 ~ Pan American World Airways ceased operations following its bankruptcy, ending 64 years of operation.

 

1978 ~ Dianne Feinstein (b. 1933) became San Francisco, California’s first female mayor.  She became mayor following the murder of Mayor George Moscone (1929 ~ 1978) the previous day.  She served as mayor for just over 9 years.  She later went on to become a United States Senator from California.

 

1971 ~ The Montreux Casino in Switzerland was set ablaze during a Frank Zappa concert when someone shot a flare gun.  The band Deep Purple would memorialize the event in the song, Smoke on the Water.

 

1956 ~ Jerry Lee Lewis (b. 1935), Carl Perkins (1932 ~ 1998), Johnny Cash (1932 ~ 2003) and Elvis Presley (1935 ~ 1977) got together for the first and only time at Sun Studios.  This event was later memorialized in the musical, Million Dollar Quartet.

 

1954 ~ The first Burger King restaurant opened.  It was in Miami, Florida.

 

1945 ~ The United States Senate approved the United States’ participation in the United Nations, which had been established on October 24, 1945.

 

1943 ~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 ~ 1945) shut down the Works Progress Administration (WPA), because of high levels of employment resulting as a result of World War II.

 

1918 ~ President Woodrow Wilson (1856 ~ 1924) became the first American president to travel to Europe while still in office when he set sail for Versailles, France to discuss peace talks at the conclusion of World War I.

 

1909 ~ The Montreal Canadiens ice hockey club was founded as a charter member of the National Hockey Association.  The club is the oldest professional hockey franchise in the world.

 

1881 ~ The Los Angeles Times began publication.

 

1875 ~ Boss Tweed (né William M. Tweed; 1823 ~ 1878), the New York politician, escaped from prison and fled first to Cuba, then to Spain, where he was ultimately captured and returned to prison where he died.

 

1829 ~ In India, the British governor Lord William Bentinck (1774 ~ 1839) issued an order declaring that all who abet in the practice of suttee would be guilty of culpable homicide.

 

1674 ~ Father Jacques Marquette (1637 ~ 1675) founded a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan.  This mission would later become the city of Chicago, Illinois.

 

1110 ~ The Kingdom of Jerusalem, a kingdom established during the First Crusade, sacked the coastal city of Sidon, in what is now present-day Lebanon.

 

Good-Byes:

 

2017 ~ Christine Keeler (née Christine Margaret Keeler; b. Feb. 22, 1942), British model and topless showgirl.  She is best known for being in a sex scandal with British governmental official John Profomo and a Soviet diplomat during the Cold War.  She died of pulmonary disease at age 75.

 

2015 ~ Robert Loggia (né Salvatore Loggia; b. Jan. 3, 1930), American actor.  He died of Alzheimer’s disease a month before his 86th birthday.

 

2008 ~ Forrest Ackerman (né Forrest James Ackerman; b. Nov. 24, 1916), American collector of science fiction books and fantasy buff who coined the term “Sci-Fi.”  He was born and died in Los Angeles, California.  He died about 2 weeks after his 92nd birthday.

 

1993 ~ Frank Zappa (né Frank Vincent Zappa; b. Dec. 21, 1940), American musician and composer.  He died of prostate cancer 17 days before his 53rd birthday.

 

1975 ~ Hannah Arendt (née Johanna Cohn Arendt; b. Oct. 14, 1906), German political theorist and writer.  She died of a heart attack at age 69.

 

1973 ~ Alfred Fuller (né Alfred Carl Fuller; b. Jan. 13, 1885), Canadian-American businessman and founder of the Fuller Brush Company.  He was born in Welsford, Nova Scotia, Canada.  He died in Hartford, Connecticut.  He died at age 88.

 

1967 ~ Bert Lahr (né Irving Lahrheim, b. Aug. 13, 1895), American actor best know for his role as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.  He died at age 72.

 

1945 ~ Thomas Hunt Morgan (b. Sept. 25, 1866), American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and embryologist.  He was the 1933 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the role chromosomes played in heredity.  He died at age 79.

 

1935 ~ Charles Richet (né Charles Robert Richet; b. Aug. 25, 1850), French physiologist and recipient of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on anaphylaxis.  He died at age 85.

 

1902 ~ Charles Dow (né Charles Henry Dow; b. Nov. 6, 1851), American journalist who, along with Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser, founded the Dow Jones & Company.  He was also the founder of the Wall Street Journal.  He died less than a month after his 51st birthday.

 

1850 ~ William Sturgeon (b. May 22, 1783), English physicist and inventor of the electric motor.  He died at age 67.

 

1828 ~ Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (né Robert Banks Jenkinson, b. June 7, 1770), Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.  He served in that office from June 1812 through April 1927.  He died at age 58 of a stroke.

 

1680 ~ Thomas Bartholin (b. Oct. 20, 1616), Danish physician and mathematician.  He died at age 64.

 

1679 ~ Thomas Hobbes (b. Apr. 5, 1588), English philosopher.  He is considered the Father of Modern Political Science.  He died at age 91.

 

1642 ~ Cardinal Richelieu (né Armand Jean du Plessis, b. Sept. 9, 1585), French clergyman and statesman.  He was the 1st Chief Minister to the French King.  He died at age 57.

 

1609 ~ Alexander Hume (b. 1560), Scottish poet.  The exact date of his birth is not known.

 

1576 ~ Rheticus (né Georg Joachim de Porris; b. Feb. 16, 1514), Austrian mathematician and astronomer.  He died at age 60.

 

1334 ~ Pope John XXII (né Jacques Duèze; b. 1249).  He was Pope from August 1316 until his death 13 years later.  The exact date of his birth is not known.

 

1214 ~ William the Lion (b. 1143), Scottish king.  He was king from December 1165 until his death 49 years later.  The exact date of his birth is not known, but he is believed to have been about 71 at the time of his death.

 

1131 ~ Omar Khayyám (b. May 18, 1048), Persian mathematician and poet.  He died at age 83.

 

771 ~ Carloman I (b. June 28, 751), King of the Franks.  He died at age 20.

 

530 BCE ~ The date ascribed to the death of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire.  He was known for his compassion towards the Jews who had been exiled to Babylon.

 

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