Today LXXXI

Birthdays:

• Ottorino Respighi, composer, musicologist, Roman Festivals, and the three suites of Ancient Airs and Dances, July 9, 1879 - April 18, 1936


• Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, physicist, discovered superfluidity, awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics, for his work in low-temperature physics, sharing the prize with Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson, July 9, 1894 – April 8, 1984


• Mervyn Laurence Peake, writer, artist, poet, and illustrator, known for the Gormenghast books, July 9, 1911 – November 17, 1968


• David Leo Diamond, composer, July 9, 1915 – June 13, 2005


• Benjamin Roy Mottelson, nuclear physicist, shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics with Aage Bohr and James Rainwater, 1926


• Edmund Dantes Urick, aka Ed Ames, singer and actor, 1927


• Harriet Shapiro, aka Susan Cabot, actress, July 9, 1927 - December 10, 1986


• Jesse Lester McReynolds, singer and mandolin player, 1929


• David Hockney, CH, artist, 1937


• Brian Dennehy, movies television, and stage actor, 1938


• Richard Roundtree, actor and former male fashion model, 1942


• Edy Williams, actress, 1942


• Dean Ray Koontz, suspense fiction author, 1945


• John 'Mitch' Mitchell, musician, drummer for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, 1947


• Willie James Wilson, former MLB outfielder, 1955


• Peter Mark Sinclair 'Marc' Almond, vocalist, 1956


• Thomas Jeffrey 'Tom' Hanks, two-time Academy Award-winning actor, 1956


• Kelly McGillis, actress, 1957


• Courtney Michelle Harrison, aka Courtney Love, rock musician and actress, 1964


• Frederick Aaron Savage, actor and television director, 1976


• Linda Park, actress, known as Hoshi Sato in Star Trek: Enterprise, co-founder of the theater company Underground Asylum, 1978

RIP:

• Count Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro di Quaregna e Cerreto, chemist, known for his contributions to the theory of molarity and molecular weight; Avogadro's Number (the number of molecules in one mole) is named in his honor, as is Avogadro's Law, August 9, 1776 – July 9, 1856


• Fritz Bennicke Hart, composer, February 11, 1874 – July 9, 1949


• Harry Edwin Heilmann, MLB first baseman and right fielder from 1914 to 1933; held the Major League record of 134 hits on the road in 1925, until Ichiro Suzuki passed it in 2004 with 145, August 3, 1894 – July 9, 1951


• Eric Sevareid, news journalist and war correspondent, November 26, 1912 – July 9, 1992


• Laurence M. Janifer, science fiction author, March 17, 1933- July 10, 2002


• Rodney Stephen 'Rod' Steiger, actor, won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the sheriff in In the Heat of the Night; also nominated for his roles in On the Waterfront and The Pawnbroker, April 14, 1925 – July 9, 2002


• Isabel Sanford, actress, most famous for her role as Louise Jefferson in All in the Family and The Jeffersons; first black woman to win a Best Actress Emmy, August 29, 1917 – July 9, 2004