Today CLXXXIX

Birthdays:

• Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti, composer, influential in the development of the Classical period in music, October 26, 1685 – July 23, 1757


• Johan Helmich Roman, composer, October 26, 1694 - November 20, 1758


• Ferdinand Georg Frobenius, mathematician, known for his contributions to the theory of differential equations and to group theory, October 26, 1849 - August 3, 1917


• Charles William [C. W.]Post, cereal and foods manufacturer, a pioneer in the prepared-food industry, October 26, 1854 - May 9, 1914


• Benjamin Guggenheim, businessman, who died aboard RMS Titanic, October 26, 1865 – April 15, 1912


• Carl Wilhelm Kahlo, photographer, the father of artist Frida Kahlo, October 26, 1871 – April 14, 1941


• Thomas Martin Lowrey, physical chemist; in 1914, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; in 1920, he became the first holder of a chair of physical chemistry at Cambridge University; he formulated the protonic definition of acids and bases in 1923, October 26, 1874 – November 2, 1936


• Josef Paul Zukauskas, aka Jack Sharkey, World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, October 26, 1902 – August 17, 1994


• Primo Carnera, World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, October 26, 1906 – June 29, 1967


• Mahalia Jackson, gospel singer, October 26, 1911 – January 27, 1972


• Don Siegel, film director, October 26, 1912 - April 20, 1991


• Charles Daly CHARLIE Barnet, jazz saxophonist and bandleader, October 26, 1913 – September 4, 1991


• John Leslie JACKIE Coogan, actor, who began his movie career as a child actor in silent films, October 26, 1914 – March 1, 1984


• Neal Matthews, Jr., singer; in 1953, he became a member of the Nashville-based singing group, The Jordanaires; he developed the numbering system for chords that was instrumental in creating what became known as the Nashville Sound, October 26, 1929 - April 21, 2000


• Robert William BOB Hoskins, Jr., actor, 1942


• Jacquelyn Ellen JACLYN Smith, actor, known for her role in Charlie's Angels, the only female lead to remain with the series for its complete run, 1945


• Patrick Leonard PAT Sajak, current host of Wheel of Fortune, 1946


• Holly Woodlawn, actress and former Warhol superstar, 1946


• Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, the junior Senator from New York, and wife of Bill Clinton, First Lady of the United States during his two; prior to that, she was a lawyer and the First Lady of Arkansas, 1947


• Stephen Douglas STEVE Rogers, former MLB starting pitcher, who played his entire career for the Montréal Expos, he was a five-time All-Star; 1974, 1978, 1979, 1982, and 1983, 1949


• William "Bootsy" Collins, pioneering funk bassist, singer, and songwriter, played in James Brown's backing band and in Funkadelic, 1951


• Professor Andrew Motion, poet, novelist, and biographer, who is the current Poet Laureate of England, 1952


• Margarita Ibrahimoff, aka Rita Wilson, actress and producer, wife of Tom Hanks, 1956


• Mark DYLAN McDermott, actor, 1961


• Ivan Simon CARY Elwes, actor, 1962


• Natalie Anne O'Shea Merchant, musician, who joined 10,000 Maniacs in 1981 and began her solo career in 1993, 1963


• Steve Valentine, actor, who has performed on stage and screen, and is best known as Nigel Townsend on Crossing Jordan, 1966


• Seth Woodbury MacFarlane, animator, screenwriter, producer, director, and voice actor, best known as the creator of Family Guy and American Dad!, 1971


• Alexandra Pauline SASHA Cohen, figure skater, 1984

RIP:

• John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, and founder of York, now Toronto, February 25, 1752 – October 26, 1806


• John Kinder Labatt, brewer, the founder of the Labatt Brewing Company, 1803 – 26 October 26, 1866


• Charles Albert Comiskey, MLB player, manager and team owner; as owner of the Chicago White Sox from 1900 to 1931, oversaw the building of Comiskey Park in 1910; inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939, August 15, 1859 - October 26, 1931


• Hattie McDaniel, actress, the first black American to be nominated and to win for her Academy Award-winning supporting role of Mammy in the 1939 movie Gone with the Wind, June 10, 1895 – October 26, 1952


• Walter Wilhelm Gieseking, pianist and composer, November 5, 1895 – October 26, 1956


• Dr. Gerty Theresa Cori, biochemist and educator, shared the 1947 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with her husband Carl Ferdinand Cori and physiologist Bernardo Houssay for their discovery of how glycogen is broken down and resynthesized in the body; the Cori crater on the Moon is named after her, August 15, 1896 – October 26, 1957


• Nikos Kazantzakis, author of poems, novels, essays, plays, and travel books, and philosopher, author of Zorba the Greek, February 18, 1883 - October 26, 1957


• Alma Angela Cohen, aka Alma Cogan, singer of traditional pop music, May 19, 1932 - October 26, 1966


• Vincent Coleman, stage and film actor of the silent film era February 16, 1901 - October 26, 1971


• Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky, inventor, who designed the first four-engine airplane and the first successful helicopter of the most common configuration, (single main rotor, tail rotor), 25 May 1889 – 26 October 1972


• August Rodney GUS Mancuso, MLB catcher; in a 17-season career, he was a .265 hitter with 53 home runs and 543 RBI in 1460 games; he was an All-Star in 1935 and 1937, December 5, 1905 - October 26, 1984


• Charles John Pedersen, organic chemist, known for describing methods of synthesizing crown ethers, awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, October 3, 1904 – October 26, 1989>/li>
  
• Wilbert Harrison, singer, who had a Billboard No.1 record in 1959 with the song Kansas City, which was given a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 2001, January 5, 1929 – October 26, 1994


• Hoyt Wayne Axton, country music singer-songwriter, and film and television actor, March 25, 1938 – October 26, 1999


• Roberto Francisco BOBBY Avila González, MLB second baseman; in 1954, he won the AL Batting Champiosnhip; he was an All-Star in 1952, 1954, and 1955; in an 11-season career, he hit .281 with 80 homers, 467 RBI, 1296 hits, 725 runs, 185 doubles, 35 triples, and 78 stolen bases in 1300 games, April 2, 1924 - October 26, 2004

Also:
Dignitaries from the computer security field took the stage at the Computer History Museum this evening to note the 30th anniversary of public key cryptography and wax historical about academic, governmental, and commercial developments in security, and ponder the future.

Panelists included Whitfield Diffie, who is a cryptography pioneer and chief security officer at Sun Microsystems, Martin Hellman, a Stanford University professor, Notes founder Ray Ozzie, now Microsoft's chief software architect, and Brian Snow, retired director for the National Security Agency's Information Assurance Directorate.

Public key cryptography uses public and private keys between sender and recipient of a message for security purposes. The sender encrypts a message with a public key and the recipient uses a private key to decrypt it. Its birth is traced to the November 1976 publishing of a paper entitled, "New Directions in Cryptography," by Diffie and Hellman.

Panelist Dan Boneh, also a Stanford University professor as well as a co-inventor of identity-based encryption, said government has gone from stalling deployment of cryptography to mandating it with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA. "There's been a complete flip, recognizing that encryption is there to help us, not just to help our enemies," Boneh said.