Today CLXXXV

Birthdays:

• Erasmus Reinhold, astronomer and mathematician, who catalogued a large number of stars; he was a member of the Melanchthon Circle, a group of Lutheran mathematicians who were generally friendly to Copernican astronomy, October 22, 1511 – February 19, 1553


• Franz Liszt, virtuoso pianist and composer, listen to his music!, October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886


• Louis Riel, politician, a founder of the province of Manitoba, and leader of the Métis people of the Canadian prairies, who led two resistance movements against the Canadian government, seeking to preserve Métis rights and culture as their homelands in the Northwest Territories came progressively under the Canadian sphere of influence, October 22, 1844 – November 16, 1885


• Clinton Joseph Davisson, physicist, shared the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics with George Paget Thomson for the discovery of electron diffraction, October 22, 1881 – February 1, 1958


• George Wells Beadle Ph.D., geneticist, who shared half of the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edward Lawrie Tatum for their discovery that genes act by regulating biochemical events within the cell, October 22, 1903 – June 9, 1989


• Jerome Lester Horwitz, aka Curly Howard, comedian and actor, one of the Three Stooges, October 22, 1903 – January 18, 1952


• Constance Campbell Bennett, actress, October 22, 1904 - July 24, 1965


• Joseph Kosma, composer, famous for his film scores and for Autumn Leaves, with lyrics by Jacques Prévert, October 22, 1905 - August 7, 1969


• 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


• Frances Drake, actress, October 22, 1912 - January 18, 2000


• Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland, aka Joan Fontaine, actress, won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1941 for her performance in Suspicion; she is the younger sister of Olivia de Havilland, 1917


• Louis Frank LOU Klein, MLB infielder and manager, October 22, 1918 - June 20, 1976


• Doris May Tayler Lessing, CH, writer, 1919


• Timothy Francis Leary, Ph.D., writer, psychologist, campaigner for psychedelic drug research and use, 1960's counterculture icon, and computer software designer, most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD, October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996


• Aleksandr (Alexander) Semenovich Kronrod, mathematician and computer scientist, October 22, 1921 – October 6, 1986


• Dory Langdon Previn, singer-songwriter, poet, and lyricist for motion picture theme songs during the 1960's and early 1970's, including the soundtrack to the Valley of the Dolls; she and her first husband, André Previn, received several Academy Award nominations for their joint efforts in motion picture songwriting; she released six albums of original songs, and one live album, between 1970 and 1976, 1925


• Bobby Seale, civil rights activist, who co-founded the Black Panther Party in 1966 with Huey P. Newton, 1936


• Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE, actor and director, knighted in 1994 for his services to the theatre, in 2003, he was involved with Scream of the Shalka — a webcast based on Doctor Who, in which he played the voice of the Master, alongside Richard E. Grant as the Doctor; in the same year, he appeared in Deadline, an audio drama also based on Doctor Who, 1938


• Christopher Allen Lloyd, character actor, whose first major motion picture role was as a psychiatric patient in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; he is best known for his roles as Reverend Jim Ignatowski on the sitcom Taxi, and as Emmett "Doc" Brown in the Back to the Future movies, 1938


• David Anthony TONY Roberts, actor, best known for his work in the films of Woody Allen, 1939


• Annette Joanne Funicello, Mouseketeer, singer, and teen idol, who starred in a series of Beach Party movies with Frankie Avalon; she announced in 1992 that she suffers from multiple sclerosis; in 1993, she opened the Annette Funicello Fund for Neurological Disorders at the California Community Foundation, 1942


• Robert Gaston BOBBY Fuller, rock singer and guitarist, the leader of The Bobby Fuller Four, best known for his hit song I Fought the Law, October 22, 1942 – July 18, 1966


• Jan de Bont, cameraman, film director, and producer, 1943


• Catherine Fabienne Dorléac, aka Catherine Deneuve, actress, sister of the late Françoise Dorléac, 1943


• Leslie Weinstein, aka Leslie West, rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter, co-founder of Mountain, 1945


• Edward EDDIE Brigati, Jr., singer, a member of Joey Dee and the Starliters, replacing his brother, David Brigati, in that group; shared vocals, and played tambourine for The Young Rascals, later The Rascals, from 1965 to 1972, 1946


• Jeffrey Lynn JEFF Goldblum, film, Broadway, and television actor, won a Saturn Award for Best Actor in 1987 for The Fly, 1952


• Frank Michael DiPino, former MLB pitcher, 1956


• Wesley Stace, aka John Wesley Harding, folk/pop singer-songwriter, 1965


• Héctor Pacheco PIPO Carrasco, MLB relief pitcher and spot starter for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim; in a ten-season career, he has posted a 35-46 record with 18 saves and a 3.93 ERA in 557 relief appearances and six starts, 1969


• Helmut Lotigiers, aka Helmut Lotti, pop singer, 1969


• Ichiro Suzuki, MLB right fielder for the Seattle Mariners, who made his MLB debut in 2001, after playing for nine years for the Orix Blue Wave in Japan's Pacific League; he won the AL MVP and Rookie of the Year awards, only the second player in MLB history to receive both awards in the same season; he won a Gold Glove in each of his first five years in the majors; he was a six-time All-Star from 2001 to 2006; he completed the 2004 season with a new MLB record 262 hits, and an MLB-leading .372 batting average, 1973


• Robinson José Canó, MLB second baseman, currently playing for the New York Yankees; he was named after Jackie Robinson, 1982

RIP:

• Charles Martel [Charles the Hammer], duke of the Franks, grandfather of Charlemagne, best remembered for winning the Battle of Tours in 732, August 23, 686 – October 22, 741


• Pomponio Nenna, composer of the Renaissance, remembered for his madrigals, baptized June 13, 1556 – c. October 22, 1613


• Ludwig [Louis] Spohr, composer, violinist, and conductor, April 5, 1784 – October 22, 1859


• Paul Cézanne, Post-Impressionist painter, January 19, 1839 – October 22, 1906


• Robert James BOB Fitzsimmons, professional boxer, who beat Gentleman Jim Corbett, who had beaten John L. Sullivan, May 26, 1863 - October 22, 1917


• Myrtle Gonzalez, stage and screen actress during the early days of movies, September 28, 1891 - October 22, 1918


• Soghomon Gevorki Soghomonyan - Komitas Vardapet, priest, composer, choir leader, singer, music ethnologist, music pedagogue, and musicologist, 1869 - October 22, 1935


• Pau Carles Salvador Casals i Defilló, aka Pablo Casals, virtuoso cellist, conductor, and composer, who made many recordings of solo, chamber, and orchestral music, and as a conductor, but is best remembered for his recording of Bach's Cello Suites, December 29, 1876 – October 22, 1973


• Nadia Boulanger, composer, conductor, and music professor, studied with Gabriel Fauré; her students included: Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, Burt Bacharach, Daniel Barenboim, Leonard Bernstein, John Eliot Gardiner, Egberto Gismonti, Philip Glass, and Gian Carlo Menotti, September 16, 1887 – October 22, 1979


• Albert Szent-Györgyi, physiologist, awarded the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; active in the Hungarian Resistance during World War II, September 16, 1893 – October 22, 1986


• Angiolino LINO Joseph Pascal Ventura, actor, July 14, 1919 - October 22, 1987


• James JIMMIE Miller, aka Ewan MacColl, folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer, January 25, 1915 - October 22, 1989


• Cleavon Little, actor, best known for his lead role in Blazing Saddles, starred in the stage musical Purlie in 1970, winning a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical, June 1, 1939 - October 22, 1992


• Sir Kingsley William Amis, novelist, poet, critic, and teacher, who wrote more than twenty novels, three collections of poetry, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism, April 16, 1922 – October 22, 1995


• Eric Ambler, writer, who essentially invented the modern spy novel; he also wrote under the pseudonym Eliot Reed, June 28, 1909 - October 22, 1998