1 All Saints Day
1871 Stephen Crane; 1942 Larry Flynt, Marcia Wallace; 1944 Keith Emerson; 1960 Fernando Valenzuela, 1960 Lyle Lovett.
• 1512: Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling is exhibited to the public for the first time; first viewer to quip "Il mio bambino potrebbe fare quello!" ("My kid could do that!") is excommunicated.
• 1776: Mission San Juan Capistrano founded in California; displaced swallows vow ominously, "We'll be back!"
• 1896: First appearance of bare-breasted woman in National Geographic; teenage boys suddenly get very interested in "geography."
• 1959: First NHL goalie to wear a hockey mask; his post pro-sports career as a chainsaw wielding maniac surprises few.
• 1971: Eisenhower dollar coin introduced; many blame it for sparking interest in the 1950s and saddling us with Grease, Happy Days and Sha-Na-Na.

2 1734 Daniel Boone; 1755 Marie Antoinette; 1906 Luchino Visconti; 1913 Burt Lancaster; 1914 Ray Walston; 1938 Patrick Buchanan; 1942 Shere Hite, Stefanie Powers; 1961 k.d. lang.
• 1889 North Dakota becomes 39th & South Dakota becomes the 40th state.
• 1934 Babe Ruth tours Tokyo; wows hosts by accurately pointing toward restaurant whose daily specials he'll polish off next.
• 1947: Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose" flies for first and only time.
• 1948: Dewey Defeats Truman!; no, wait.
• 1959: Charles Van Doren confesses that TV quiz show 21, was "Fixed" and "Kind of lame."

3 1922 Charles Bronson; 1933 Michael S. Dukakis; 1948 Lulu; 1949 Larry Holmes; 1952 Roseanne Barr; 1953 Dennis Miller; 1954 Adam Ant; 1959 Dolph Lundgren.
• 1913: U.S. introduces income tax.
• 1955: Alabama woman bruised by meteor; police later determine that "Meteor" is her husband's nickname.
• 1956: The Wizard of Oz first televised.
• 1988: Geraldo Rivera's nose is broken in a brawl with skinheads at a taping of his TV show.

4 1879 Will Rogers; 1916 Walter Cronkite; 1918 Art Carney; 1962 Ralph Macchio.
• 1879: First cash register is patented.
• 1922: Howard Carter discovers King Tut's tomb; eerily, everyone on expedition with him eventually dies.
• 1954: Philadelphia A's move to Kansas City.
• 1980: Ronald Reagan is elected president by a landslide.

5 1911 Roy Rogers; 1913 Vivien Leigh; 1931 Ike Turner; 1942 Art Garfunkel; 1943 Sam Shepard; 1947 Peter Noone; 1952 Bill Walton; 1963 Tatum O'Neal
• 1872: Susan B. Anthony fined $100 for trying to vote for Ulysses S. Grant; "$100!?!" she laughs, "He paid way more for my vote than that!"
• 1935: Parker Brothers launches game of Monopoly; Standard Oil sues for copyright infringement.

6 1854 John Phillip Sousa; 1931 Mike Nichols; 1946 Sally Field; 1948 Glenn Frey; 1970 Ethan Hawke.
• 1860: Abraham Lincoln elected president.
• 1861: Jefferson Davis is elected to a six-year term as President of the Confederate States of America.
• 1906: Charles Evans Hughes elected Governor of New York over William Randolph Hearst; Charles Foster Kane is a distant third.

7 1879 Leon Trotsky; 1913 Albert Camus; 1918 Billy Graham; 1922 Al Hirt; 1926 Joan Sutherland; 1943 Joni Mitchell; 1949 Judy Tenuda.
• 1805: Lewis & Clark reach Pacific Ocean; upon sighting the surf, they turn to youngest member of party and say, "Okay, yes, we're there yet! Now shut up!"
• 1811: Battle of Tippecanoe which, although it involved neither canoes or tipping, later makes for a snappy presidential campaign slogan for William Henry Harrison (and Tyler, too).
• 1874: Cartoonist Thomas Nast first depicts elephant as Republican Party symbol; elephants, who never forget, still pissed off.
• 1876: Presidential candidates Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden both claim victory; it goes to Hayes because he has the more prominent middle initial.
• 1929: New York's Museum of Modern Art opens; visitors agree that, "What this place really needs is a ridiculously tall, post-modern apartment tower above it."
• 1952 First hydrogen bomb exploded by U.S. at Eniwetok Atoll; Godzilla's appearance two years later deemed a "just a coincidence."
• 1982: Liz Taylor's 7th divorce (John Warner R-VA)

8 1900 Margaret Mitchell; 1927 Patti Page; 1931 Morley Safer; 1947 Minnie Ripperton; 1949 Bonnie Raitt; 1954 Rickie Lee Jones.
• 1793: Louvre opens in Paris; mimes at entrance sent to guillotine.

9 1913 Hedy Lamarr; 1915 Sargent Shriver; 1918 Spiro Agnew; 1932 Carl Perkins; 1934 Carl Sagan; 1951 Lou Ferrigno.
• 1799: Napoleon becomes First Consul (i.e., dictator) of France.
• 1989: East Berlin opens its borders.

10 1483 Martin Luther; 1697 William Hogarth; 1889 Claude Rains; 1925 Richard Burton; 1935 Roy Scheider; 1956 Sinbad; 1959 MacKenzie Phillips.
• 1674: Dutch formally cede (at gunpoint) New Netherlands (New York) to the English.
• 1871: Explorer Henry Stanley chooses the greeting, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume," over his first choice of, "Wassup dawg?!"
• 1928: Hirohito enthroned as Emperor of Japan.
• 1969: Sesame Street premieres.

11 Veterans Day
1821 Fyodor Dostoyevsky; 1885 George S. Patton; 1896 Charles "Lucky" Luciano; 1904 Alger Hiss; 1922 Kurt Vonnegut Jr.; 1925 Jonathan Winters; 1962 Demi Moore; 1974 Leonardo DiCaprio.
• 1860: First Jewish wedding in Buenos Aires, Argentina; mazel tov! [in Espanol]
• 1921: President Warren G. Harding dedicates Tomb of Unknown Soldier; some believe the soldier isn't unknown but that Harding just forgot his name during the speech.
• 1959: Rocky & His Friends debuts.

12 1840 Auguste Rodin; 1903 Jack Oakie; 1908 Harry Blackmun; 1922 Kim Hunter; 1929 Grace Kelly; 1934 Charles Manson; 1945 Al Michaels, Neil Young; 1961 Nadia Comaneci: 1968 Sammy Sosa.
• 1910: First Movie stunt: man jumps into Hudson river from a burning balloon.
• 1933: First known photo of Loch Ness monster (or whatever) is taken (or fabricated, manufactured or something).
* 1990: Tim Berners-Lee publishes a formal proposal for the World Wide Web; we're betting he didn't see LOLCats coming.

13 1850 Robert Louis Stevenson; 1947 Joe Mantegna; 1949 Whoopi Goldberg.
• 1789: Ben Franklin writes "Nothing is certain but death & taxes"; he dies the following April 17th, having deliberately filed his taxes a day late and a dollar short.
• 1851: First settlers reach what will become Seattle; they make camp, open a Starbucks.
• 1875: Harvard-Yale game is first college football contest with uniforms; it was simply too cold to play naked like the year before.
• 1940: Fantasia released; is Disney's most psychedelic work until Herbie the Love Bug.
• 1970: Vice President Spiro Agnew calls TV executives "impudent snobs"; hard to argue, but coming from him, not so compelling.
• 1982: Vietnam War Memorial dedicated in Washington, D.C.

14 1765 Robert Fulton; 1840 Claude Monet; 1861 Frederick Jackson Turner; 1900 Aaron Copland; 1909 Joseph McCarthy; 1919 Veronica Lake; 1929 McLean Stevenson; 1939 Wendy (née Walter) Carlos; 1948 Prince Charles.
• 1851: Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, published.
• 1889: Intrepid reporter Nellie Bly begins 72 day round-the-world trip.
• 1935: FDR proclaims the Philippine Islands a free commonwealth; a few years later, the Japanese proclaim otherwise.

15 1887 Georgia O'Keeffe; 1891 Erwin Rommel; 1929 Edward Asner; 1932 Petula Clark; 1940 Sam Waterston.
• 1492: Christopher Columbus makes first recorded reference to tobacco; his notes translate roughly as, "I'd walk a mile for this stuff."
• 1806: By a remarkable coincidence, the first explorer to see Pike's Peak turns out to be Zebulon Pike.
• 1864: First U.S. mining school opens in basement of Columbia University; incoming freshmen's first class assignment, dig a basement under Columbia University.
• 1864: Sherman burns Atlanta; Lincoln sends congratulatory telegram, "Well done."

16 1889 George S. Kaufman; 1904 Eddie Condon; 1908 Burgess Meredith; 1916 Daws Butler; 1928 Clu Gulager; 1935 Elizabeth Drew; 1964 Dwight Gooden; 1970 Martha Plimpton.
• 1532: Pizarro seizes Incan emperor Atahualpa after victory at Cajamarca.
• 1776: Hessians capture Fort Washington, in Upper Manhattan; they are driven out in 1997 by skyrocketing real estate prices.
• 1906: Enrico Caruso is charged with an "indecent act" after pinching a woman's bottom in the monkey house of New York's Central Park Zoo; he is later acquitted when, on advice of their attorney and pleading the Fifth Amendment, the monkeys refuse to testify.

17 1901 Lee Strasberg; 1904 Isamu Noguchi; 1925 Rock Hudson; 1930 Bob Mathias; 1937 Peter Cook; 1938 Gordon Lightfoot; 1942 Martin Scorsese; 1943 Lauren Hutton; 1944 Danny De Vito, Tom Seaver.
• 1558: Elizabeth I takes the throne of England; thus begins the reign that launched a thousand costume dramas.
• 1869: Suez Canal opens.
• 1913: Panama Canal opens.
• 1973: President Nixon claims, "I'm not a crook."

18 1789 Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre; 1901 George Gallup; 1908 Imogene Coca; 1909 Johnny Mercer; 1923 Alan Shepard Jr., Ted Stevens; 1939 Brenda Vaccaro; 1941 David Hemmings; 1950 Graham Parker, Elizabeth Perkins; 1974 Chlöe Sevigny.
• 1776: Hessians capture Fort Lee, New Jersey and, so far as we know, still have it.
• 1865: Mark Twain publishes The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
• 1980: Heaven's Gate premieres.

19 1831 James A. Garfield; 1905 Tommy Dorsey; 1917 Indira Gandhi; 1926 Jeane J. Kirkpatrick; 1933 Larry King; 1936 Dick Cavett; 1938 Ted Turner; 1939 Garrick Utley; 1941 Dan Haggerty; 1942 Calvin Klein; 1961 Meg Ryan; 1962 Jodie Foster.
• 1863: Lincoln delivers The Gettysburg Address.
• 1959: Ford cancels the Edsel.

20 1889 Edwin Hubble; 1900 Chester Gould; 1908 Alistair Cooke; 1917 Robert Byrd; 1923 Nadine Gordimer; 1925 Robert F. Kennedy; 1929 Dick Clark; 1932 Richard Dawson; 1939 Dick Smothers; 1940 Bob Einstein; 1942 Joseph Biden Jr.; 1946 Duane Allman; 1947 Joe Walsh; 1956 Bo Derek.
• 1780 Britain declares war on Holland; when asked why later on, they can't remember.
• 1888: William Bundy patents the timecard clock; making Monday an even bigger drag than it already was.

21 1694 Voltaire; 1898 Rene Magritte; 1937 Marlo Thomas; 1945 Goldie Hawn; 1965 Björk.
• 1787: Andrew Jackson admitted to the bar; later asked to leave after a drunken brawl with some Masons.
• 1871: Moses Gale patents a cigar lighter.
• 1946: Harry Truman becomes first U.S. President to travel in a submerged submarine.

22 1890 Charles de Gaulle; 1898 Wiley Post; 1899 Hoagy Carmichael; 1921 Rodney Dangerfield; 1932 Robert Vaughn; 1940 Terry Gilliam; 1958 Jamie Lee Curtis; 1961 Mariel Hemingway.
• 1842: Mount St. Helens in Washington, erupts.
• 1906: International Radio Telecommunications Commission adopts "SOS" as call for help.
• 1963: JFK assassinated.
• 1977: Regular Concorde passenger service between NY & Europe takes off.
• 1989: Conjunction of Venus, Mars, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn and the Moon. This is some sort of big deal, right?

23 1859 Billy the Kid; 1887 Boris Karloff; 1888 Harpo Marx; 1945 Steve Landesberg.
• 1889: First jukebox goes into operation at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco; device is hogged all night by a drunk miner who repeatedly plays "My Darling Clementine."
• 1903: Enrico Caruso's U.S. debut.
• 1936: First issue of Life magazine.

24 1713 Father Junipero Serra; 1784 Zachary Taylor; 1864 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; 1868 Scott Joplin; 1888 Dale Carnegie; 1925 William F. Buckley Jr.; 1942 Billy Connolly; 1949 Linda Tripp.
• 1857: Darwin publishes The Origin of Species; apes sue for defamation of character.
• 1947: Un-American Activities Committee finds "Hollywood 10" in contempt of congress because of their refusal to reveal whether they were communists; they are further miffed when the stars also refuse to give them autographs or be photographed with them.
• 1963: Reality TV debuts when Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald on camera.
• 1971: "DB" Cooper parachutes from a Northwest AL 727 with $200,000.

25 1914 Joe DiMaggio; 1920 Ricardo Montalban; 1935 Gloria Steinem; 1947 John Larroquette.
1960 Amy Grant, John F. Kennedy Jr.
• 1834: Delmonico's in New York offers a meal of soup, steak, coffee and half a pie for 12 cents; in today's dollars that meal would still be too old to eat.
• 1864: Confederate plot to burn down Manhattan fails when New Yorkers won't "lend" would-be arsonist a match.
• 1952: Agatha Christie's murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens in London and eventually becomes the longest continuously-running play in history.

26 1912 Eugene Ionesco; 1922 Charles M. Schulz; 1925 Linda Hunt; 1933 Robert Goulet; 1938 Rich Little, Tina Turner; 1945 John McVie.
• 1825: College students form Kappa Alpha Society, 1st fraternity; later revealed as elaborate ruse to explain previous night’s drunken toga party.
• 1865: Alice in Wonderland published.
• 1973: President Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, tells a federal court she accidentally caused part of 18-minute gap in a key Watergate tape.

27 1701 Anders Celsius; 1917 "Buffalo" Bob Smith; 1937 Gail Sheehy; 1940 Bruce Lee; 1941 Eddie Rabbitt; 1942 Jimi Hendrix.
• 1870: The New York Times dubs baseball "The National Game"; rival New York Post accuses Times of being "in the tank" for baseball.
• 1895: Alfred Nobel establishes Nobel Prize; forcing Joseph Pulitzer to rename his prize after himself.
• 1967: Beatles release Magical Mystery Tour; spend most of 1968 trying to live it down.

28 1757 William Blake; 1936 Gary Hart; 1943 Randy Newman; 1949 Paul Shaffer; 1950 Ed Harris.
• 1582: William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway get marriage license; they also register at Bard, Bath & Beyond.
• 1843: The Kingdom of Hawaii is officially recognized by Britain and France as an independent nation; the U.S. stands nearby whistling nonchalantly and trying to look inconspicuous.
• 1948: Hopalong Cassidy premieres on TV.

29 1832 Louisa May Alcott; 1927 Vin Scully; 1933 John Mayall; 1944 Felix Cavaliere; 1949 Garry Shandling.
National Day in Albania.Treat your goat to lunch. Or eat your goat for lunch. We’re not sure, it’s in Albanian.
• 1961: Mercury rocket carries Enos the chimp into orbit; weeks later the first human astronaut slips on a leftover banana peel.

30 1667 Jonathan Swift; 1810 Oliver Winchester; 1835 Mark Twain; 1874 Sir Winston Churchill; 1912 Gordon Parks; 1923 Efrem Zimbalist Jr.; 1930 G. Gordon Liddy; 1931 Davey Jones; 1936 Abbie Hoffman; 1937 Paul Stookey; 1947 David Mamet; 1952 Mandy Patinkin; 1955 Billy Idol; 1962 Bo Jackson.
• 1887: First indoor softball game; ends in a tie and an argument over "Who's going to pay for all these broken windows?"
• 1907: Pike Place Market dedicated in Seattle; first fish thrown in 1912.
• 1940: Desi marries Lucy.
• 1981: Porn star John Holmes is caught while a fugitive; the arresting officer refuses to say how he recognized him.