Tuesday, November 15, 2022

November 15

Birthdays:

 

1984 ~ Asia Kate Dillon, American actor.  They identify as non-binary and are best known for portraying Taylor Mason on the television series Billions.  They were born in Ithaca, New York.

 

1957 ~ Kevin Eubanks (né Kevin Tyrone Eubanks), American jazz and fusion guitarist.  He was the leader of The Tonight Show Band with Jay Leno.  He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

 

1952 ~ Randy Savage (né Randy Mario Poffo; d. May 20, 2011), American show-off who took wrestling mainstream.  He died of a heart attack while driving, which caused a car crash.  He was born in Columbus, Ohio.  He died at 58 in Seminole, Florida.

 

1951 ~ Beverly D’Angelo (née Beverly Heather D’Angelo), American actress.  She was born in Upper Arlington, Ohio.

 

1947 ~ Bill Richardson (né William Blaine Richardson, III), American politician and 9th United States Secretary of Energy.  He served during the Bill Clinton administration from August 1996 until January 2001.  He subsequently went on to become the 30th Governor of New Mexico, where he served from January 2003 until January 2011.  He was born in Pasadena, California.

 

1941 ~ Heathcote Williams (né John Henley Heathcote-Williams; d. July 1, 2017), British writer who embraced the counterculture.  He was a poet, actor, and playwright.  He died at age 75 in Oxford, England.

 

1940 ~ Tony Mendez (né Antonia Joseph Mendez; d. Jan. 19, 2019), American technical operations officer and CIA trickster who directed the Argo plot.  When a militant Iranian group stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, Mendez created a fake film production company to get the 6 employees who had escaped to the Canadian embassy out of the country and back in the United States.  This escape was later depicted in the film, Argo.  He was born in Eureka, Nevada.  Mendez died of complications of Parkinson’s disease at age 78 in Frederick, Maryland.

 

1940 ~ Sam Waterston (né Samuel Atkinson Waterston), American actor.  He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 

1935 ~ Nera D. White (d. Apr. 13, 2016), American farm girl who became a basketball sensation.  She was born in Macon County, Tennessee.  She died of complications from pneumonia at age 80 in Gallatin, Tennessee.

 

1932 ~ Petula Clark (née Sally Olwen Clark), British singer.

 

1930 ~ J.G. Ballard (né James Graham Ballard; d. Apr. 19, 2009), British novelist.  He was born in Shanghai, Republic of China.  He died at age 78 in London, England.

 

1929 ~ Ed Asner (né Eddie Asner; d. Aug. 29, 2021), American outspoken actor who embraced activism.  He is best known for his role as the coarse but idealistic newsman Lou Grant on the Mary Tyler Moore Show.  He was also a political activist.  He was born in Kansas City, Missouri.  He died at age 91 in Tarzana, California.

 

1928 ~ C.W. McCall (né William Dale Fries, Jr.; d. Apr. 1, 2022), American adman who became the bard of long-haul truckers.  He had worked as an ad campaigner for a Midwestern breadmaker, when he recorded the 1975 trucker anthem Convoy.  He was born in Audubon, Iowa.  He died at age 93 in Ouray, Colorado.

 

1925 ~ Howard Baker, Jr. (né Howard Henry Baker, Jr.; d. June 26, 2014), American Senator from Tennessee who skewered President Nixon over Watergate.  He was the 12th White House Chief of Staff.  He served under President Ronald Reagan in that Office from July 2001 until February 2005.  He was born and died in Huntsville, Tennessee.  He died at age 88.

 

1920 ~ Father Robert Drinan (né Robert Frederick Drinan; d. Jan. 28, 2007), American priest and politician from Massachusetts.  He left the priesthood to comply with Pope John Paul II’s request that all priests remain neutral on politics.  He served in the United States House of Representatives for the State of Massachusetts from January 1971 until January 1981.  He was born in Boston, Massachusetts.  He died at age 86 in Washington, D.C.

 

1919 ~ Joseph Wapner (né Joseph Albert Wapner; d. Feb. 26, 2017), American judge who presided over The People’s Court.  He was the original television judge.  His daytime show, The People’s Court, which settled small-claims suits, ran from 1981 until 1993.  He was born and died in Los Angeles, California.  He died of respiratory failure at age 97.

 

1907 ~ Claus von Stauffenberg (d. July 21, 1944), German leader of a failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.  He was executed by firing squad at age 36.

 

1906 ~ Curtis LeMay (né Curtis Emerson LeMay; d. Oct. 1, 1990), General in the United States Air Force.  He served in World War II.  He served as the 5th United States Air Force Chief of Staff under the Presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from June 1961 until January 1965.  He was born in Columbus, Ohio.  He died of a heart attack at age 83 at the March Air Force Base in California.

 

1895 ~ Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna (d. July 17, 1918), member of the Russian royal family.  She was of the House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov.  She was the eldest daughter of Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia and Alix of Hesse and by Rhine.  She was 22 at the time of her assassination by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution.

 

1895 ~ Bella Rosenfeld (d. Sept. 2, 1944), Russian-born wife of Marc Chagall (1887 ~ 1985), and subject of many of his paintings.  She was born in Viceibsk, Belarus.  She died of a viral infection at age 49 in New York, New York.

 

1891 ~ Erwin Rommel (d. Oct. 14, 1944), Nazi German field marshal known as The Desert Fox.  He committed suicide a month before his 53rd birthday.

 

1891 ~ W. Averell Harriman (né William Averell Harriman, d. July 26, 1986), 11th Secretary of Commerce.  He served under President Harry S Truman from October 1946 through April 1948.  He then became the Governor of New York, where he served in Office from January 1955 through December 1958.  He was born in New York, New York.  He died at age 94 in Youngstown Heights, New York.

 

1887 ~ Marianne Moore (née Marianne Craig Moore; d. Feb. 5, 1972), American poet.  She was born in Kirkwood, Missouri.  She died at age 84 in New York, New York.

 

1887 ~ Georgia O’Keeffe (née Georgia Totto O’Keeffe; d. Mar. 6, 1986), American artist.  She was married to photographer Alfred Stieglitz.  She was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.  She died at age 98 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

 

1882 ~ Felix Frankfurter (d. Feb. 22, 1965), Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.  He was nominated to the High Court by President Franklin Roosevelt. He served on the Court from January 1939 until August 1962.  He replaced Benjamin Cardozo on the High Court.  He was succeeded by Arthur Goldberg.  In 1920, he helped found the ACLU.  He was born in Vienna, Austria.  He died in Washington, D.C., at age 82.

 

1881 ~ Franklin Pierce Adams (né Franklin Leopold Adams; d. Mar. 23, 1960), American journalist.  He was born in Chicago, Illinois.  He died at age 78 in New York, New York.

 

1874 ~ August Krogh (né Schack August Steenberg Krogh; d. Sept. 13, 1949), Danish zoologist.  He was the recipient of the 1920 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in the discovery of the mechanism of the regulation of capillaries in skeletal muscles.  He died at age 74 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

 

1873 ~ Sara Josephine Baker (d. Feb. 22, 1945), American physician best known for her role in promoting public health.  She is best known for tracking down Typhoid Mary.  She was born in Poughkeepsie, New York.  She died at age 71 in Princeton, New Jersey.

 

1862 ~ Gerhard Hauptmann (né Gerhard Johann Robert Hauptmann; d. June 6, 1946), German dramatist and novelist.  He was the recipient of the 1912 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He died at age 83.

 

1849 ~ Mary E. Byrd (née Mary Emma Byrd, d. July 13, 1934), American astronomer and college professor.  She was the director of the observatory at Smith College in Massachusetts.  She was born in Le Roy, Michigan.  She died of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 84 in Lawrence, Kansas.

 

1793 ~ Michel Chasles (né Michel Floréal Chasles; d. Dec. 18, 1880), French mathematician.  He died in Paris, France about a month after his 87th birthday.

 

1741 ~ Johann Casper Lavater (d. Jan. 2, 1801), Swiss poet and theologian.  He was born and died in Zürich, Switzerland.  He died at age 59.

 

1738 ~ William Herschel (né Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel; d. Aug. 25, 1822), German-born astronomer and mathematician.  He died at age 83.

 

1708 ~ William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (d. May 11, 1778), Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.  He was known William Pitt, the Elder, as his son of the same name was later Prime Minister of Great Britain.  He served in office during the reign of King George III, from July 1766 until October 1768.  He died at age 69.

 

1511 ~ Johannes Secundus (d. Sept. 25, 1536), Dutch poet.  He was born in The Hague.  He died at age 24.

 

1498 ~ Eleanor of Austria (d. Feb. 25, 1558), Queen consort of Portugal through her first marriage to Manuel I, King of Portugal.  They were married in 1518.  After his death, she married Francis I, King of France and became Queen consort of France.  She was also known as Eleanor of Castile.  She was of the House of Habsburg.  She was the daughter of Joanna, Queen of Castile and Philip I, King of Castile.  She was Roman Catholic.  She died at age 59.

 

1316 ~ John I, King of France and Navarre (d. Nov. 20, 1316).  He ruled France and Navarre for only 5 days.  He was of the House of Capet.  He was the son of Louis X, King of France and Clementia of Hungary.  His father had died before he was born, thus he became king upon his birth, thus was referred to as John the Posthumous.  He died, however, 5 days after his birth.

 

Events that Changed the World:

 

2012 ~ Xi Jinping (b. 1953) became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China.

 

2003 ~ Bombings began in Istanbul, in which two car bombs targeting two synagogues exploded.  Twenty-five people were killed and over 300 people were injured.  Subsequent bombings continued five days later.

 

1990 ~ The Communist People’s Republic of Bulgaria was disestablished.  A new republican government was instituted.

 

1985 ~ A research assistant at the University of Michigan was injured when a package addressed to a professor from the Unabomber exploded.

 

1979 ~ A package later linked to be from Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski (b. 1942), began smoking in the cargo of a plane destine to fly from Chicago to Washington, D.C.  The plane was forced to make an emergency landing and there were no fatalities.

 

1971 ~ Intel released the first commercial single-chip microprocessor.

 

1969 ~ Dave Thomas (1932 ~ 2002) opened his first Wendy’s hamburger store in Columbus, Ohio.

 

1959 ~ Four members of the Herbert Clutter Family were murdered at their farmhouse in rural Kansas.  The account of the murder later became the best-selling novel, In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote (1924 ~ 1984).

 

1943 ~ During the Holocaust, Nazi leaders ordered that Romani people be transported to concentration camps.

 

1942 ~ The Battle of Guadalcanal during World War II ended in a decisive Allied victory.

 

1939 ~ The corner stone for the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., was laid.

 

1938 ~ Nazi German banned Jewish children from attending public schools.

 

1935 ~ Manuel L. Quezon (1878 ~ 1944) was inaugurated as the 2nd President of the Philippines.  He served in that office from November 15, 1935, until his death on August 1, 1944.

 

1926 ~ The NBC radio network opened with 24 stations.

 

1920 ~ The League of Nations Assembly met in Geneva, Switzerland and held its first meeting.

 

1920 ~ The Free City of Danzig was established.

 

1867 ~ The first stock ticker was used in New York to print out stock quotes on streams of papers.

 

1864 ~ Union General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820 ~ 1891) burned Atlanta, Georgia and began his March to the Sea during the American Civil War.

 

1806 ~ While on an expedition, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike (1770 ~ 1813) spied a distant mountain peak in the Colorado foothills.  It was later named Pikes Peak in his honor.

 

1777 ~ A draft of the Articles of Confederation was approved by the United States Congress.

 

1533 ~ Francisco Pizarro (1470s ~ 1541) is said to have arrived in Cuzco, the capital of the Incan Empire on this date.

 

1532 ~ Conquistadors from Spain, led by Francisco Pizarro (1470s ~ 1541), arrived in Cajamarca in the Incan empire.

 

Good-Byes:

 

2019 ~ Harrison Dillard (né William Harrison Dillard; b. July 8, 1923), African-American star hurdler who became an Olympic legend.  To date, he is the only male to win the gold medal in both the 100 meter and the 110 meter hurdles in the Olympics.  He competed in the 1948 and in the 1952 Olympics.  He was born and died in Cleveland, Ohio.  He died at age 96.

 

2015 ~ P.F. Sloan (né Philip Gary Schlein, b. Sept. 18, 1945), American troubled pop rock singer who wrote a ‘60s protest anthem, the Eve of Destruction.  He was born in New York, New York.  He died at age 70 in Los Angeles, California.

 

2013 ~ T.J. Jemison (né Theodore Judson Jemison; b. Aug. 1, 1918), African-American minister and civil rights activist.  He was born in Selma, Alabama.  He died in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at age 95.

 

2012 ~ Bernard Lansky (b. Mar. 10, 1927), American tailor who lived in Memphis, Tennessee and who clothed Rock ‘n Roll royalty, starting with Elvis Presley.  He died at age 85.

 

1998 ~ Stokely Carmichael (né Stokley Standiford Churchill Carmichael; b. June 29, 1941), Trinidadian-American civil rights activist.  He died of prostate cancer at age 57.

 

1996 ~ Alger Hiss (b. Nov. 11, 1904), American government official who was accused of being a Soviet spy.  He was born in Baltimore, Maryland.  He died in New York, New York 4 days after his 92nd birthday.

 

1994 ~ Elizabeth George Speare (née Elizabeth George; b. Nov. 21, 1908), American author, primarily of children’s literature.  She was born in Melrose, Massachusetts.  She died 6 days before her 86th birthday in Tucson, Arizona.

 

1978 ~ Margaret Mead (b. Dec. 16, 1901), American anthropologist. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  She died a month before her 77th birthday in New York, New York.

 

1971 ~ Rudolf Abel (né William August Fisher; b. July 11, 1903), British-born Russian spy.  He was captured in the United States and was later exchanged for Gary Powers in a prisoner exchange.  This was recounted in the movie Bridge of Spies.  Abel died at age 68 in Moscow, Soviet Union.

 

1959 ~ Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (b. Feb. 14, 1869), Scottish physicist and meteorologist.  He was the recipient of the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the cloud chamber.  He died at age 90.

 

1958 ~ Tyrone Power (né Tyrone Edmund Power, III; b. May 5, 1914), American movie actor.  He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.  He died of a heart attack at age 44 in Madrid, Spain.

 

1954 ~ Lionel Barrymore (né Lionel Herbert Blyth; b. Apr. 28, 1878), American actor.  He was a member of the theatrical Barrymore family.  He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  He died of a heart attack at age 76 in Van Nuys, California.

 

1951 ~ Frank Weston Benson (b. Mar. 24, 1862), American painter.  He was born and died in Salem, Massachusetts.  He died at age 89.

 

1922 ~ Petros Protopapadakis (b. 1854), Greek politician and mathematician.  He was the Greek Prime Minister in 1922 but was overthrown and executed in a military coup.

 

1919 ~ Alfred Werner (b. Dec. 12, 1866), German inorganic chemist and recipient of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  He died 27 days before his 53rd birthday of arteriosclerosis in Zurich, Switzerland.

 

1917 ~ John Foster (né John Watson Foster, b. Mar. 2, 1832), 32nd United States Secretary of State.  He served under President Benjamin Harrison from June 1892 until February 1893.  He was the grandfather of John Foster Dulles, who later became United States Secretary of State during the Eisenhower administration.  He was born in Petersburg, Indiana.  He died at age 81 in Washington, D.C.

 

1916 ~ Henryk Sienkeiwicz (b. May 5, 1846), Polish author and recipient of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He died at age 70.

 

1908 ~ Empress Dowager Cixi (b. Nov. 29, 1835), Chinese ruler.  She effectively controlled the Chinese government in the late Qing Dynasty from 1861 until her death in 1908.  She died 14 days before her 73rd birthday.

 

1853 ~ Maria II, Queen of Portugal (b. Apr. 4, 1819).  She reigned from May 1826 to June 1828, then again from May 1834 until her death in 1853.  She was married twice.  Her first husband was Auguste de Beahuarnais, Duke of Kuechtenberg.  He died 2 months after they married.  Her second husband was Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.  She was of the House of Braganza.  She was the daughter of Pedro I, Emperor of Brazil / Pedro IV, King of Portugal and Maria Leopoldina of Austria (née Archduchess Caroline Josepha Leopoldine of Austria).  She was Roman Catholic.  She died in childbirth at age 34.

 

1839 ~ William Murdoch (b. Aug. 21, 1754), Scottish engineer and inventor.  He created gas lighting.  He died at age 85.

 

1787 ~ Christoph Gluck (né Christoph Willibald Gluck; b. July 2, 1714), German composer.  He died at age 73.

 

1706 ~ 6th Dalai Lama (né Tsangyang Gyatso; b. Mar. 1, 1683).  He died at age 23.

 

1630 ~ Johannes Kepler (b. Dec. 27, 1571), German astronomer and mathematician.  He died at age 58.

 

1553 ~ Lucrezia de’Medici (née Lucrezia Maria Romola de’Medici; b. Aug. 4, 1470), Italian noblewoman.  She was the wife of Jacopo Salviati.  She was of the noble de’Medici family.  She was the daughter of Lorenzo de’Medici and Clarice Orsini.  The exact date of her death is not known, but it is believed she died sometime between November 10 and 15, 1553.  She was 83 years old.

 

1527 ~ Princess Catherine of York (b. Aug. 14, 1479), Countess of Devon.  She was married to William Courtenay, 1stEarl of Devon.  She was of the House of York.  She was the daughter of Edward IV, King of England and Elizabeth Woodville.  She died at age 48.

 

1351 ~ Joanna, Countess of Pfirt (b. 1300), Duchess consort of Austria.  She was married to Albert II, Duke of Austria.  She was the Countess of Pfirt in her own right.  She was of the House of Scarponnois.  She was the daughter of Ulrich III, Count of Pfirt and Joanna of Burgundy.  The date of her birth is not known, but she is believed to have been about age 51 at the time of her death.

 

1280 ~ Albertus Magnus (b. 1193 between 1206), German theologian, bishop and philosopher.  He is also known as Saint Albert the Great.  The exact date of his birth is unknown.

 

165 BCE ~ Matthathias, traditional date of the death of Matthathias ben Johanan, a Kohen who was instrumental in the Maccabean Revolt.


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