Today LXVIII

Birthdays:

• Georg Brandt, chemist and mineralogist, discovered Cobalt in 1737, June 26, 1694 - April 29, 1768


• Abner Doubleday, Union general in the American Civil War, who fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter; credited by many with the invention of baseball, June 26, 1819 – January 26, 1893


• William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, GCVO, OM, PC, PRS, mathematical physicist and engineer, working in the mathematical analysis of electricity and thermodynamics; enjoyed a second career as a telegraph engineer and inventor; created the absolute temperature scale, the units of which are known as degrees Kelvin, June 26, 1824 – December 17, 1907


• Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker, aka Pearl S. Buck, writer, winner of the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, and the 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature, June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973


• Wilhelm Emil WILLY Messerschmitt, aircraft designer and manufacturer, June 26, 1898 – September 15, 1978


• Frank Scott Hogg, Ph.D., astronomer, pioneered the spectrophotometry of stars, and the study of spectra of comets; developed a two-star sextant for air navigation; head of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Toronto and director of the David Dunlap Observatory from 1946 until his death, June 26, 1904 – January 1, 1951


• Ladislav (László) Löwenstein, aka Peter Lorre, stage and screen actor, often imitated, June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964


• Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk, aka "Colonel" Tom Parker, manager of Elvis Presley, June 26, 1909 – January 21, 1997


• Mildred Ella BABE Didrikson Zaharias, Olympic athlete and golfer, June 26, 1911 – September 27, 1956


• Harold J. Smith, aka Jay Silverheels, actor, Tonto on The Lone Ranger, June 26, 1912 – March 5, 1980


• Eleanor Parker, film and television actress, 1922


• Claudio Abbado, orchestral and opera conductor, 1933


• David Grusin, jazz pianist, composer, and arranger; in 1982, co-founded GRP Records with Larry Rosen in 1982, 1934


• Robert Coleman Richardson, Ph.D., physicist, shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics with David Morris Lee and Douglas Osheroff for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3, 1937


• Gilberto Passos GIL Moreira, singer, guitarist, songwriter, and currently Brazil's Minister of Culture, 1942


• Clive Powell, aka Georgie Fame, rhythm and blues and jazz singer and keyboard player, 1943


• Michael Geoffrey MICK Jones, guitarist and singer, known for his work with The Clash, 1955


• Christopher Joseph CHRIS Isaak, rock, pop, and rock and roll singer, songwriter, and actor, 1956


• Mark Douglas Brown McKinney, comedian and actor, known for his work with The Kids in the Hall and Saturday Night Live, 1959


• Sean Patrick Hayes, Emmy award-winning actor, Jack McFarland on Will & Grace [Am I the only one who's glad that the series is over?], 1970


• Gretchen Renée Wilson, Grammy Award-winning country music singer, 1973


• Derek Sanderson Jeter, six-time All-Star shortstop and current captain with the New York Yankees, 1974


• Jason Daniel Kendall, MLB catcher with the Oakland Athletics, 1974

RIP:

• Joseph Michel Montgolfier, inventor, invented the montgolfière, or hot air balloon, the first aircraft to carry humans into the sky, with his brother, Jacques Étienne, August 26, 1740 – June 26, 1810


• Karl Landsteiner, biologist and physician, noted for his development in 1901 of the modern system of classification of blood groups; awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, June 14, 1868 – June 26, 1943


• Clifford Brown, jazz trumpeter, October 30, 1930 – June 26, 1956


• Françoise Dorléac, actress, March 21, 1942 - June 26, 1967


• William Harrison Riker, Ph.D., political scientist who applied game theory and mathematics to policial science, September 22, 1920 – June 26, 1993


• Roy Campanella, catcher in the Negro Leagues and Major League Baseball, played in the All-Star Game every year from 1949 to 1956, NL MVP in 1951, 1953, and 1955; in 1969, inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the second black player, after Jackie Robinson, in the Hall; paralyzed from the chest down after an automobile accident in January 1958, November 19, 1921 - June 26, 1993