Today CLXI

Birthdays:

• Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, artist, September 28, 1571 – July 18, 1610


• Johann Mattheson, composer, writer, lexicographer, diplomat, and music theorist, September 28, 1681 – April 17, 1764


• Ferdinand Frederick Henri Moissan, chemist, awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in isolating fluorine from its compounds, September 28, 1852 – February 20, 1907


• Kate Douglas Wiggin, children's author and educator, who wrote Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm , September 28, 1856 - August 24, 1923


• John Frank JACK Fournier, MLB first baseman; in 14 seasons, he hit .313 with a .393 on-base percentage, September 28, 1889 – September 5, 1973


• William S. Paley, radio and TV executive,, who built CBS from a small radio network to the dominant radio and television network operation in America, September 28, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois – October 26, 1990


• Edward Vincent ED Sullivan, entertainment writer and television host; he was originally a newspaper sportswriter and theatre columnist for the New York Daily News, where his column concentrated on Broadway shows and gossip; he also did show business news broadcasts on radio; in 1948, CBS hired him to do a weekly Sunday night TV variety show, Toast of the Town, which later became The Ed Sullivan Show; he had a knack for identifying and promoting top talent and paid a great deal of money to secure that talent for his show; he paid for the funeral of dancer Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson out of his own pocket; he also defied pressure to exclude black musicians from appearing on his show, September 28, 1901 – October 13, 1974


• Maximillian Adolph Otto Siegfried MAX Schmeling, () was a German boxer, September 28, 1905 – February 2, 2005


• Alfred Gerald Caplin, aka Al Capp, cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Li'l Abner; he also wrote the comic strips Abbie and Slats and Long Sam, September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979


• Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg, American citizen and Communist Party member, tried, convicted, and executed for spying for the Soviet Union; she and her husband were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage and of passing nuclear weapons secrets to Russian agents; the accuracy of these charges remains controversial, September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953


• Frederick George Peter Ingle-Finch, aka Peter Finch, actor, September 28, 1912 – January 14, 1977


• Audree Neva Korthof Wilson, the mother of Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson, and Carl Wilson of The Beach Boys, September 28, 1917 - December 1, 1997


• William Windom, actor, 1923


• Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni, film actor, September 28, 1924 – December 19, 1996


• Seymour Roger Cray, electrical engineer and supercomputer architect, who founded Cray Research in 1972, September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996


• Arnold Stang, comic actor in radio, movies, cartoons [Top Cat], and commercials, 1925


• Brigitte Bardot, actress, former fashion model, singer, and activist, considered the embodiment of the 1950s "sex kitten," 1934


• Robert Ray ROD Roddy, radio and television announcer, the long-time announcer on The Price is Right, September 28, 1937 – October 27, 2003


• Benjamin Earl Nelson, aka Ben E. King, soul and pop singer, best known as the singer and co-composer of Stand by Me, 1938


• Stuart Alan Kauffman M.D., theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher, 1939


• Klaus Karl Kassbaum, aka Nick St. Nicholas, musician, played bass for Steppenwolf from 1968 to 1971, 1943


• Helen Shapiro, singer, 1947


• Jeffrey Duncan Jones, character actor, who appeared in Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Mom and Dad Save The World, among other films, 1946


• John Thomas Sayles, independent film director and writer, who frequently takes a small part in his own and other indie films; he got his start in film working with Roger Corman, 1950


• Laurie Lewis, bluegrass musician, 1950


• George Lynch, heavy metal guitarist, 1954


• Janeane Garofalo, stand-up comedian, actress, political activist, and writer, 1964


• Mira Katherine Sorvino, actress and political activist, daughter of Paul Sorvino, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1995 for Mighty Aphrodite, 1967


• Moon Unit Zappa, aka Moon Zappa, stand-up comic, magazine writer, actress, and author, 1967


• Naomi Watts, actress, whose father was a sound engineer with Pink Floyd - it is his laugh that kicks off Dark Side of the Moon, 1968


• Michel Dwain DeJean, MLB right-handed relief pitcher for the Colorado Rockies, 1970


• Heather Renée Sweet, aka Dita von Teese, burlesque artist, 1972


• Se Ri Pak, professional golfer, 1977


• Ryan Wallace Zimmerman, MLB third baseman with the Washington Nationals, 1984


• Hilary Erhard Duff, actress and singer, 1987

RIP:

• Herman Melville, novelist, essayist and poet, author of Moby-Dick and Billy Budd, August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891


• Louis Pasteur, microbiologist and chemist, best known for demonstrating how to prevent milk and wine from going sour, a process now called pasteurization; his experiments confirmed the germ theory of disease, and he created the first vaccine for rabies; he became one of the founders of bacteriology, December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895


• Richard Warren Sears, manager, businessman, and the founder of Sears, Roebuck and Company with his partner Alvah C. Roebuck, December 7, 1863 – September 28, 1914


• William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, inventor, invented the motion picture camera while working for Thomas Edison, August 3, 1860 – September 28, 1935


• Edwin Powell Hubble, astronomer, noted for his discovery of galaxies beyond the Milky Way, and of the cosmological redshift, November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953


• Adolph Arthur HARPO Marx, actor and comedian, one of the Marx Brothers; in 1955, he made an appearance on I Love Lucy, in which he and Lucille Ball re-enacted the famous mirror scene from the movie Duck Soup, November 23, 1888 – September 28, 1964


• John Herbert Chapman Ph.D., space researcher, who started his career with his work on radio propagation and the ionosphere; one of the later projects that he directed was the Canadian satellite Alouette, August 8, 1921 - September 28, 1979


• Mabel Albertson, actress, the older sister of actor Jack Albertson and mother-in-law of actress Cloris Leachman, best known as Phyllis Stephens, Darrin's mother on the sitcom Bewitched, July 24, 1901 - September 28, 1982


• Miles Dewey Davis III, jazz trumpeter, bandleader and composer, May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991


• Joseph Philippe PIERRE Yves Elliott Trudeau PC, CC, CH, QC, MA, LLD, FRSC, the fifteenth Prime Minister of Canada, October 18, 1919 – September 28, 2000


• Patsy Matsu Takemoto Mink, politician and civil rights leader, a Democratic who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for a total of 12 terms, representing Hawaii's second congressional district, noted for authoring the Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act, renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act;
  she also was the Assistant United States Secretary of State, December 6, 1927 – September 28, 2002


• Althea Gibson, professional tennis player, the first black woman to be a competitor on the world tennis tour, won five Singles, five Doubles, and one Mixed Doubles Grand Slam Titles, August 25, 1927 – September 28, 2003


• Elias Kazanjoglou, aka Elia Kazan, film and theatre director and producer, whose theatre credits included directing Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Death of a Salesman; as a film director, he won two Academy Awards for Best Director for Gentleman's Agreement and On the Waterfront; as a result of his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the postwar Red Scare, in which he "named names," he found himself hated by the left, and mistrusted by many on the right; in 1999, he received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement - the audience displayed mixed reactions to his receiving the award, September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003