Today CLIV

Birthdays:

• Louis Jolliet [or Joilet], explorer; he and missionary Jacques Marquette were the first white men to map the Mississippi River, baptised September 21, 1645 – 1700


• John Loudon McAdam, engineer and road-builder, who invented a new process, for building roads with a smooth hard surface that would be more durable and less muddy than soil-based tracks; this construction method became known as macadamization or macadam; the most significant later improvement was the introduction of tar to bind the road surface's stones together, producing tarmac (Tar Macadam), September 21, 1756 - November 26, 1836


• Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blyth, aka Maurice Barrymore, actor, patriarch of the Barrymore acting family, father of Lionel, Ethel, and John, September 21, 1849 - March 26, 1905


• Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, physicist, who explored extremely cold refrigeration techniques and the associated phenomena; awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics for his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led to the production of liquid helium, September 21, 1853 – February 21, 1926


• John Bunny, first comic star of the American silent film era, September 21, 1863 - April 26, 1915


• Herbert George [H. G.] Wells, writer, best known for his science fiction novels, wrote works in nearly every genre, including short stories and nonfiction; outspoken socialist, most of whose works contain some political or social commentary, September 21, 1866 – August 13, 1946


• Dr. Charles Jules Henry Nicolle, bacteriologist, awarded the 1928 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his identification of lice as the transmitter of epidemic typhus, September 21, 1866 – February 28, 1936


• George Vital PAPA JACK Laine aka Papa Jack, drummer and band leader in New Orleans, noted for his skills at arranging and booking bands; many of the New Orleans musicians who first spread jazz around the USA in the 1910's and 1920's got their start in the Laine bands; he hired well over 100 musicians to play in these bands; even after segregation laws started demanding "whites" and "colored" be kept separate, he continued to hire light- and medium-light-skinned black musicians, claiming that they were "Cuban" or "Mexican" , September 21, 1873 - June 1, 1966


• Gustavus Theodor von Holst, aka Gustav Theodor Holst, composer, known for his orchestral suite The Planets, whose music was influenced by Indian spiritualism and English folk tunes, September 21, 1874 – May 25, 1934


• Charles Martin CHUCK Jones, animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for Warner Brothers, directing many of the classic short animated cartoons starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Pepé Le Pew, and the other Warners characters, September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002


• György Sándor, pianist, a friend of Béla Bartók, and champion of his music, September 21, 1912 – December 9, 2005


• Donald Arthur Glaser, physicist and neurobiologist, awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the bubble chamber, 1926


• Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams FBA, moral philosopher, September 21, 1929 – June 10, 2003


• Larry Martin Hageman, aka Larry Hagman, actor, famous for his roles as Major Tony Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie, and J.R. Ewing on Dallas, the son of actress Mary Martin, 1931


• Leonard Norman Cohen, CC, poet, novelist, and singer-songwriter, who began his career in literature, publishing his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956, and his first novel in 1963; after his breakthrough in the music industry in the late 1960's, he was recognized as a songwriter, 1934


• Henry Gibson Bateman, aka Henry Gibson, actor, known as a member of the cast of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, 1935


• Patricia Neal [not the one in Hud], aka Fannie Flagg, author and actress, 1944


• Jerome Bruckheimer, film and television producer, 1945


• Stephen Edwin King, author, best known for his horror novels, and guitar player, 1947


• Marsha Norman, playwright, won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play 'night, Mother, 1947


• Donald DON Felder, rock musician, best known as guitarist for The Eagles, 1947


• William James BILL Murray, comedian and actor, best known as an SNL alumnus, and for movies such as Ghostbusters, 1950


• Richard James Hieb, astronaut, a veteran of three space shuttle missions, 1955


• Ethan Coen, film writer and director, 1957


• David DAVE Lee Coulier, television and voice actor, known for his role as Joey Gladstone on Full House, 1959


• Danny Bradford Cox, former MLB pitcher, played for the St. Louis Cardinals, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Pittsburgh Pirates; he pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays from 1993 to 1995, and then retired; in an eleven-year career, he posted a career 74 wins, 75 losses, 3.64 ERA, 21 complete games, 5 shutouts, and 8 saves, 1959


• David William Smith, aka David James Elliott, the star of the JAG series from 1995 to 2005, 1960


• Húbert Nói Jóhannesson, contemporary artist working in painting, installation, movies, sculpture, photography, and music, 1961


• Cecil Grant Fielder, former MLB first baseman, who played with the Toronto Blue Jays and Detroit Tigers, among others; in 1990, he became the first player to hit 50 home runs in a season since George Foster hit 52 in 1977 - Fielder had 132 RBI that year; in his six-year stay with Detroit, he had four consecutive 30-homer and 100-RBI seasons, and became the only Tiger ever to hit at least 25 homers in six consecutive seasons; he was an All-Star in 1990, 1991, and 1993, and won a Silver Slugger Award in 1990 and 1991; in his career, he batted .255, with 319 HRs, 1008 RBI, and a .482 slugging average, drawing 693 walks for a .345 on base percentage, stealing one base; his son, Prince, is the Milwaukee Brewers' starting first baseman, 1963


• Cheryl Hines, actress, 1965


• Audrey Faith Perry McGraw, aka Faith Hill, country singer, 1967


• Tyler Joseph Stewart, musician, drummer for the Barenaked Ladies, 1967


• Jason Samuel Christiansen, MLB left-handed pitcher, 1969


• Alfonso Ribeiro, actor and singer, 1971


• William John Paul LIAM Gallagher, lead vocalist for Oasis, 1972


• Douglas P. DOUG Davis, MLB starting pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers, 1975


• Margaret Grace Denig, aka Maggie Grace, actress, 1983

RIP:

• Gerolamo Cardano, aka Hieronymus Cardanus, Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer, and gambler, September 24, 1501 - September 21, 1576


• Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher, known for his work The World as Will and Representation, February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860


• Kokichi Mikimoto, inventor of the cultured pearl, March 10, 1858 – September 21, 1954


• Bernardo Alberto Houssay M.D., physiologist, shared the 1947 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Carl and Gerty Corifor his discovery of the role played by pituitary hormones in regulating the amount of blood sugar in animals, April 10, 1887 – September 21, 1971


• Walter Brennan, character actor, the first actor to win three Academy Awards, and the only person to have won three Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor; starred in the TV series The Real McCoys, July 25, 1894 – September 21, 1974


• John Francis JACO Pastorius III, jazz bassist and innovator, and composer, known for his virtuoso technique and fretless bass playing style, in a solo and seesion career, and with Weather Report, December 1, 1951 – September 21, 1987


• Robert Lull [Robert L.] Forward, physicist and science fiction writer, inventor of the Forward Mass Detector, author of Dragon's Egg, Starquake, and Rocheworld.mong others, August 15, 1932 - September 21, 2002