Today XCII

Birthdays:

• Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, conqueror, July 21, 356 BC — June 11, 323 BC


• Jean-Felix Picard, astronomer and priest, July 21, 1620 – July 12, 1682


• Henri Victor Regnault, French chemist and physicist, best known for his careful measurements of the thermal properties of gases; designed sensitive thermometers, hygrometers, and calorimeters, and measured the specific heats of many substances and the coefficient of thermal expansion of gases, in the course of which he discovered that not all gases expand equally when heated and that Boyle's Law is only an approximation, especially at temperatures near a substance's boiling point, July 21, 1810 – January 19, 1878


• Ernest Miller "Papa" Hemingway, novelist, short-story writer, and journalist, received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, and the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature,, July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961


• Herbert Marshall McLuhan CC, educator, philosopher, and scholar, professor of English literature, literary critic, and communications theorist, one of the founders of the study of media ecology, July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980


• Isaac Stern, violin virtuoso, July 21, 1920 – September 22, 2001


• Rudolph 'Rudy' Arthur Marcus, chemist, awardeded the 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his theory of Electron transfer, 1923


• Katherine Laverne Starks, aka Kay Starr, jazz and popular singer, 1922


• Jesse Donald 'Don' Knotts, comedic actor, best known as Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, a role for which he earned five Emmy Awards, and as Ralph Furley on Three's Company, July 21, 1924 – February 24, 2006


• Norman Frederick Jewison, CC, BA, LL.D, film director, producer, and actor, 1926


• Edward Herrmann, film and television character actor, and narrator, 1943


• Tony Scott, film director, 1944


• Steven Demetre Georgiou, aka Cat Stevens, musician and singer-songwriter, 1948


• Garretson Beekman 'Garry' Trudeau, M.F.A., cartoonist, creator of Doonesbury; in 1975, became the first comic strip artist to win a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning; other awards include the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Comic Strip Award for 1994, and their 1995 Reuben Award, 1948


• Robin McLaurin Williams, Academy Award-winning actor and comedian, 1951


• Howard Norman 'Howie' Epstein, musician, bass guitarists, July 21, 1955 - February 23, 2003


• Jonathan 'Jon' Lovitz, comedic actor and voice actor, 1957


• Carsten Charles [C. C.] Sabathia, MLB starting pitcher, currently plays for the Cleveland Indians, 2003 and 2004 AL All-Star, 1980

RIP:

• Robert Burns, poet and songwriter, January 25, 1759 – July 21, 1796


• Josef Strauss, composer, son of Johann Strauss I and brother of Johann Strauss II and Eduard Strauss, August 20, 1827 - July 22, 1870


• Louis Victor Jules Vierne, organist and composer, October 8, 1870 – June 2, 1937


• Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, German army officer, one of the leading figures of the July 20 Plot of 1944 to kill the Führer, November 15, 1907 – July 21, 1944


• James Emory 'Jimmie' Foxx, MLB first baseman; hit 58 home runs in 1932; was AL Batting Champion in 1933 and 1938; won the 1933 Triple Crown; won MVP awards in 1932, 1933 and 1938; finished his 20-year, 2317-game career with 534 home runs, 1922 runs batted in, and a .325 batting average; had 12 consecutive seasons with 30 or more home runs; inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1951, October 22, 1907 – July 21, 1967


• Albert John Lutuli, teacher and politician, awarded the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the ANC and its fight against apartheid, 1898 – 21 July 1967


• Philip St. John Basil Rathbone, actor, appeared in Shakespearean roles on the British stage, and in silent movies, famous for playing suave villains in many swashbucklers of the 1930's, starred in fourteen Sherlock Holmes movies, June 13, 1892 – July 21, 1967


• Ruth St. Denis, dancer and choreographer, January 20, 1878 – July 21, 1968


• Dave Garroway, founding host of the Today Show, one of the pioneers of television talk, July 13, 1913 - July 21, 1982


• Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr., Rear Admiral, USN, Ret., the first U.S. astronaut in space, November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998


• Robert Young, actor, known for his roles in Father Knows Best and Marcus Welby, M.D.; he won Emmy awards for both, February 22, 1907 - July 21, 1998


• Walter Matthew 'Matt' Jefferies, aviation and mechanical artist, set designer, and writer, designed the original starship Enterprise interiors & exterior, for the Star Trek TV series; also responsible for designing props (including phasers), sets, and the Klingon logo and D-7 battle cruiser; years later, his concept sketches were used to design the spaceship Enterprise, the U.S.S. Pasteur, the Daedalus class, and pre-Federation Vulcan ships; Jefferies tubes are named in his honor, August 12, 1921 - July 21, 2003


• Jerrald King 'Jerry' Goldsmith, film and TV score composer, nominated for eighteen Academy Awards, winning one for The Omen; won five Emmy Awards, February 10, 1929 – July 21, 2004


• Edward B. Lewis, geneticist, awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, May 20, 1918 – July 21, 2004


• John William "Long John" Baldry, blues musician and voice actor, January 12, 1941 – July 21, 2005