Hell

Woody Allen is 88 today.

American actor, singer, and comedian Jim Nabors died on this day 6 years ago, aged 87. He is widely known for his signature character Gomer Pyle. Nabors also became a popular guest on variety shows that showcased his rich baritone singing voice in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the featured guest on every season premiere of The Carol Burnett Show and he had two specials of his own in 1969 and 1974. He signed a recording contract with Columbia Records in 1965 and subsequently recorded numerous albums and singles, most of them containing romantic ballads. He recorded for Ranwood Records during the late 1970s. Nabors was also known for singing "Back Home Again in Indiana" before the start of the Indianapolis 500, held annually on the Memorial Day weekend. He sang the unofficial Indiana anthem almost every year from 1972 to 2014, except for occasional absences due to illness or scheduling conflicts.

Jimmy Carter

Howie Mandel is 68 today.

American actress Natalie Wood died on this day 42 years ago, aged 43. Wood started acting at age four and was given a co-starring role at age 8 in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). As a teenager, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), followed by a role in John Ford's The Searchers (1956). Wood starred in the musical films West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962) and received nominations for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). Her career continued with films such as Sex and the Single Girl (1964), The Great Race (1965), Inside Daisy Clover (1965), and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969).

Caroline Kennedy is 66 today.

American professional football player Sean Taylor died on this day 16 years ago, aged 24. He was a free safety for the Washington Redskins of the NFL. He was selected fifth overall in the 2004 NFL Draft by the Redskins, where he played four seasons. He played college football for the Miami Hurricanes. Taylor was a member of their 2001 BCS National Championship team, and he won the Jack Tatum Trophy. With the Redskins, he gained a reputation as a hard-hitting player and was nicknamed "Meast" from the expression "half man, half beast." He made one Pro Bowl appearance in 2006. During the 2007 season, Taylor was shot by intruders at his Miami area home and died the next day.

Adolfo Perez Esquivel is 92 today.

American animator, voice actor, and marine biology educator Stephen Hillenburg died on this day 5 years ago, aged 57. He is best known for creating the animated television series SpongeBob SquarePants for Nickelodeon in 1999 - serving as the showrunner for its first three seasons and again from seasons nine until his death - which has become the fifth longest running American animated series. He also performed the original voice of Patchy's pet bird Potty the Parrot from the show. He also directed The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004), which he originally intended to be the series finale. He co-write the story for the second film adaptation of the series, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, released in 2015. He won two Emmy Awards and six Annie Awards for SpongeBob SquarePants. Hillenburg is an accolade from Heal the Bay for his efforts in elevating marine life awareness and the Television Animation Award from the National Cartoonists Society. In 2017, he announced that he is diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and died from it in 2018.

Kathryn Crosby is 90 today.

Cuban dictator, revolutionary and politician Fidel Castro died on this day 7 years ago, aged 90. He served as the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1965 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and socialist reforms were implemented throughout society. After Batista's overthrow in 1959, Castro assumed military and political power as Cuba's prime minister. The United States came to oppose Castro's government and unsuccessfully attempted to remove him by assassination, economic embargo, and counter-revolution, including the Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961. Countering these threats, Castro aligned with the Soviet Union and allowed the Soviets to place nuclear weapons in Cuba, resulting in the Cuban Missile Crisis—a defining incident of the Cold War—in 1962. Adopting a Marxist–Leninist model of development, Castro converted Cuba into a one-party, socialist state under Communist Party rule, the first in the Western Hemisphere. Policies introducing central economic planning and expanding healthcare and education were accompanied by state control of the press and the suppression of internal dissent. Abroad, Castro supported anti-imperialist revolutionary groups, backing the establishment of Marxist governments in Chile, Nicaragua, and Grenada, as well as sending troops to aid allies in the Yom Kippur, Ogaden, and Angolan Civil War. These actions, coupled with Castro's leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1979 to 1983 and Cuban medical internationalism, increased Cuba's profile on the world stage. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Castro led Cuba through the economic downturn of the "Special Period", embracing environmentalist and anti-globalization ideas. In the 2000s, Castro forged alliances in the Latin American "pink tide"—namely with Hugo Chávez's Venezuela—and formed the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas. In 2006, Castro transferred his responsibilities to Vice President Raúl Castro, who was elected to the presidency by the National Assembly in 2008.

Billy Connolly is 81 today.

American moral, legal and political philosopher in the liberal tradition John Rawls died on this day 21 years ago, aged 81. Rawls has been described as one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century. In 1990, Will Kymlicka wrote in his introduction to the field that "it is generally accepted that the recent rebirth of normative political philosophy began with the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971". Rawls's theory of "justice as fairness" recommends equal basic liberties, equality of opportunity, and facilitating the maximum benefit to the least advantaged members of society in any case where inequalities may occur. Rawls's argument for these principles of social justice uses a thought experiment called the "original position", in which people deliberately select what kind of society they would choose to live in if they did not know which social position they would personally occupy. In his later work Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls turned to the question of how political power could be made legitimate given reasonable disagreement about the nature of the good life. Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999. The latter was presented by President Bill Clinton in recognition of how his works "revived the disciplines of political and ethical philosophy with his argument that a society in which the most fortunate help the least fortunate is not only a moral society but a logical one".

Nicolas Maduro is 61 today.

British author, poet, screenwriter and wartime fighter ace Roald Dahl died on this day 33 years ago, aged 74. He rose to prominence as a writer in the 1940s with works for children and for adults, and he became one of the world's best-selling authors. His awards for contribution to literature include the 1983 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the British Book Awards' Children's Author of the Year in 1990. Dahl's short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children's books for their unsentimental, macabre, often darkly comic mood, featuring villainous adult enemies of the child characters. His children's books champion the kindhearted and feature an underlying warm sentiment. His works for children include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, The Twits, George's Marvellous Medicine and Danny, the Champion of the World. His works for older audiences include the short story collections Tales of the Unexpected and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More.

Roy Thomas is 83 today.

American actress, singer, comedian, screenwriter, and playwright Mae West died on this day 43 years ago, aged 87. Her career spanned over seven decades. Considered a sex symbol, she was known for her breezy sexual independence and her lighthearted bawdy double entendres, often delivered in a husky contralto voice. She was active in vaudeville and on stage in New York City before moving to Los Angeles to begin a career in the film industry. West was one of the most controversial movie stars of her day; she encountered problems especially with censorship. She once quipped, "I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it." She bucked the studio system by making comedy out of conventional beliefs, and the Depression-era audience admired her for it. When her film career ended, she wrote books and plays, continued to perform in Las Vegas and London and on radio and television, and recorded rock and roll albums. In 1999, the American Film Institute posthumously voted her the 15th greatest female screen legend of classic American cinema.

Michel Suleiman is 75 today.

24th vice president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his death in 1899 Garret Hobart died on this day 124 years ago, aged 55. Prior to serving as vice president, Hobart was an influential New Jersey businessman, politician and political operative. He was a longtime party official, and during the 1896 Republican National Convention, New Jersey delegates to the convention were determined to nominate him for vice president. Hobart's political views were similar to those of William McKinley, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate. With New Jersey a key state in the upcoming election, McKinley and his close adviser, future senator Mark Hanna, decided to have the convention select Hobart. As vice president, Hobart proved a popular figure in Washington and was a close adviser to McKinley. Hobart's tact and good humor were valuable to the President, as in mid-1899 when Secretary of War Russell Alger failed to understand that McKinley wanted him to leave office. Hobart invited Alger to his New Jersey summer home and broke the news to the secretary, who submitted his resignation to McKinley on his return to Washington. Hobart died from a heart disease; his place on the Republican ticket in 1900 was taken by Theodore Roosevelt.

William Russell

November 28th

Joe Biden is 81 today.

Spanish military officer Francisco Franco died on this day 48 years ago, aged 82. He led the Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War and thereafter ruled over Spain from 1939 to 1975 as a dictator, assuming the title Caudillo. This period I. Spanish history, from the Nationalist victory to Franco's death, is commonly known as Francoist Spain or as the Francoist dictatorship. During World Wars II, he maintained Spanish neutrality, but supported the Axis damaging the country's international reputation in various ways. During the start of the Cold War, Franco lifted Spain out of its mid-20th century economic depression through technocratic and economically liberal policies, presiding over a period of accelerated growth known as the "Spanish miracle". He became a leader in the anti-communist movement, garnering support from the West, particularly the United States. As the dictatorship relaxed it's hard line policies, Luis Carrero Blanco became Franco's eminence grise, whose role expanded after Franco began struggling with Parkinson's disease in the 1960s. In 1973, Franco resigned as Prime minister due to his advanced age and illness.

Joanne Woodward

Calvin Klein is 81 today.