Hell

Jamie Foxx is 56 today.

African-American civil rights and human rights activist Ella Baker died on this day 37 years ago, aged 83. She was a largely behind-the-scenes organizer whose career spanned more than five decades. In New York City and the South, she worked alongside some of the most noted civil rights leaders of the 20th century, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr. She also mentored many emerging activists, such as Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, and Bob Moses, as leaders in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Baker criticized professionalized, charismatic leadership; she promoted grassroots organizing, radical democracy, and the ability of the oppressed to understand their worlds and advocate for themselves. She realized this vision most fully in the 1960s as the primary advisor and strategist of the SNCC. Biographer Barbara Ransby calls Baker "one of the most important American leaders of the twentieth century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement". She is known for her critiques of both racism in American culture and sexism in the civil rights movement.

Bob Pettit is 91 today.

American actress Anne Baxter died on this day 38 years ago, aged 62. She won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and was nominated for an Emmy. She was a granddaughter of Frank Lloyd Wright. Baxter studied acting with Maria Ouspenskaya and had some stage experience before making her film debut in 20 Mule Team (1940). She became a contract player of 20th Century Fox and was loaned to RKO Pictures for the role of Lucy Morgan in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), one of her earlier films. In 1947, she won both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Sophie MacDonald in The Razor's Edge (1946). In 1951, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for the title role in All About Eve (1950). She worked with several of Hollywood's greatest directors, including Billy Wilder in Five Graves to Cairo (1943), Alfred Hitchcock in I Confess (1953), Fritz Lang in The Blue Gardenia (1953), and Cecil B. DeMille in The Ten Commandments (1956), for which she won a Laurel Award for Topliner Female Dramatic Performance.

Indian sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar died on this day 11 years ago, aged 92. He was a sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known expert of North Indian classical music in the second half of the 20th century, and influenced many musicians in India and throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999. in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, and was music director of All India Radio, New Delhi, from 1949 to 1956. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score for scoring the blockbuster Gandhi (1982). In 1956, Shankar began to tour Europe and the Americas playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Beatles guitarist George Harrison. His influence on Harrison helped popularize the use of Indian instruments in Western pop music in the latter half of the 1960s. Shankar engaged Western music by writing compositions for sitar and orchestra and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s. From 1986 to 1992, he served as a nominated member of Rajya Sabha, the upper chamber of the Parliament of India. He continued to perform until the end of his life. He was a recipient of numerous prestigious musical accolades, including a Polar Music Prize and five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for The Concert for Bangladesh in 1973.

January: Gina Lollobrigida or David Crosby February: General Pervez Musharraf or Burt Bacharach March: Ryuichi Sakamoto April: Harry Belafonte or Jerry Springer May: Tina Turner June: Silvio Berlusconi July: Tony Bennett August: Bob Barker September: Giorgio Napolitano October: Bobby Charlton or Matthew Perry November: Henry Kissinger December: Sandra Day O'Connor (for now)

Brenda Lee is 79 today.

Beau Bridges is 82 today.

British amateur astronomer Patrick Moore died on this day 11 years ago, aged 89. He attained prominence in that field as a writer, researcher, radio commentator and television presenter. Moore's early interest in astronomy led him to join the British Astronomical Association at the age of eleven. He served in the Royal Air Force during World War II and briefly taught before publishing his first book on lunar observation in 1953. Renowned for his expertise in Moon observation and the creation of the Caldwell catalogue, Moore authored more than seventy astronomy books. He hosted the world's longest-running television series with the original presenter, BBC's The Sky at Night, from 1957 until his death in 2012. Idiosyncrasies such as his rapid diction and monocle made him a popular and instantly recognisable figure on British television. Moore was also co-founder and president of the Society for Popular Astronomy.

Dharmendra is 88 today.

American Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, businessman, and politician John Glenn died on this day 7 years ago, aged 95. He was the third American in space, and the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962. Following his retirement from NASA, he served from 1974 to 1999 as a U.S. Senator from Ohio; in 1998, he flew into space again at the age of 77. He was one of the Mercury Seven, military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA as the nation's first astronauts. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission, becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, the third American and fifth person in history to be in space. He received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1962, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Glenn resigned from NASA in January 1964. A member of the Democratic Party, Glenn was first elected to the Senate in 1974 and served for 24 years, until January 1999. In 1998, at age 77, Glenn flew on Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-95 mission, making him the oldest person to enter Earth orbit, the only person to fly in both the Mercury and the Space Shuttle programs, and the first Member of Congress to visit space since Congressman Bill Nelson (D-FL) in 1986. At the time of his death Glenn was both the oldest and the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven.

Ellen Burstyn is 91 today.

American actress Joan Bennett died on this day 33 years ago, aged 80. She was one of three acting sisters from a show-business family. Beginning her career on the stage, Bennett appeared in more than 70 films from the era of silent films, well into the sound era. She is best remembered for her film noir femme fatale roles in director Fritz Lang's films—including Man Hunt (1941), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Scarlet Street (1945)—and for her television role as matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (and ancestors Naomi Collins, Judith Collins, Flora Collins, and Flora Collins PT) in the gothic 1960s soap opera Dark Shadows, for which she received an Emmy nomination in 1968. Bennett's career had three distinct phases: first as a winsome blonde ingenue, then as a sensuous brunette femme fatale (with looks that movie magazines often compared to those of Hedy Lamarr), and finally as a warmhearted wife-and-mother figure. In 1951, Bennett's screen career was marred by scandal after her third husband, film producer Walter Wanger, shot and injured her agent Jennings Lang. Wanger suspected that she and Lang were having an affair, a charge which she adamantly denied. She married four times.

Kenneth Copeland is 87 today.

German-American inventor, game developer, and engineer Ralph H. Baer died on this day 9 years ago, aged 92. Baer's family fled Germany just before World War II and Baer served the American war effort, gaining an interest in electronics shortly thereafter. Through several jobs in the electronics industry, he was working as an engineer at Sanders Associates (now BAE Systems) in Nashua, NH, when he conceived the idea of playing games on a television screen around 1966. With support of his employers, he worked through several prototypes until he arrived at a "Brown Box" that would later become the blueprint for the first home video game console, licensed by Magnavox as the Magnavox Odyssey. Baer continued to design several other consoles and computer game units, including contributing to design of the Simon electronic game. Baer continued to work in electronics until his death in 2014, with over 150 patents to his name. Baer is considered "the Father of Video Games" due to his many contributions to games and helping to spark the video game industry in the latter half of the 20th century. In February 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology for "his groundbreaking and pioneering creation, development and commercialization of interactive video games, which spawned related uses, applications, and mega-industries in both the entertainment and education realms".

December 18th

Jacques Delors

Sheldon Glashow is 91 today.

Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer died on this day 11 years ago, aged 104. He was considered to be one of the key figures in the development of modern architecture. Niemeyer was best known for his design of civic buildings for Brasília, a planned city that became Brazil's capital in 1960, as well as his collaboration with other architects on the headquarters of the United Nations in New York. His exploration of the aesthetic possibilities of reinforced concrete was highly influential in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In 1956, Niemeyer was invited by Brazil's new president, Juscelino Kubitschek, to design the civic buildings for Brazil's new capital, Brasília. His designs for the National Congress of Brazil, the Cathedral of Brasília, the Palácio da Alvorada, the Palácio do Planalto, and the Supreme Federal Court, all designed by 1960, were experimental and linked by common design elements. This work led to his appointment as inaugural head of architecture at the University of Brasília, as well as honorary membership of the American Institute of Architects. Due to his largely left-wing ideology, and involvement with the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), Niemeyer left the country after the 1964 military coup and opened an office in Paris. He returned to Brazil in 1985, and was awarded the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1988. A socialist and atheist from an early age, Niemeyer had spent time in both Cuba and the Soviet Union during his exile, and on his return served as the PCB's president from 1992 to 1996. Niemeyer continued working at the end of the 20th and early 21st century, notably designing the Niterói Contemporary Art Museum (1996) and the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (2002). Over a career of 78 years he designed approximately 600 projects. He made 9 appearances on Deathlist.

Jay-Z is 54 today.

American rapper and record producer Pimp C died on this day 16 years ago, aged 33. He was best known for his work with Bun B as one half of the hip hop duo Underground Kingz (UGK). Signing to Jive Records in 1992, UGK released their major-label debut album Too Hard to Swallow to critical acclaim. The group followed this with their second and third major-label albums Super Tight in 1994 and Ridin' Dirty in 1996, both of which charted in the Billboard 200 to further success. The group received national attention in 2000 after being featured on Jay-Z's hit single "Big Pimpin'", which peaked at #18 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Rhythmic Top 40. The group went on hiatus for the first half of the 2000s after Pimp C was sentenced to eight years in prison for a probation violation. During this time both members pursued solo careers, with Pimp C releasing his solo debut, The Sweet James Jones Stories, in 2005, composed of material recorded prior to his sentencing. After being released from prison in December 2005, he released his second solo album, Pimpalation, in 2006. UGK released their eponymous fifth studio album in 2007, which spawned the single "International Players Anthem (I Choose You)" featuring OutKast, which peaked at #70 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Brendan Fraser is 55 today.

British politician during the 1920s and 1930s who rose to fame when he turned to fascism Oswald Mosley died on this day 43 years ago, aged 84. He was a member of parliament and later founded and led the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Mosley was one of the youngest members of parliament, representing Harrow from 1918 to 1924. At the 1924 general election he stood in Birmingham Ladywood against the future prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, coming within 100 votes of defeating him. Mosley returned to Parliament as Labour MP for Smethwick at a by-election in 1926 and served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Labour Government of 1929–31. Mosley's New Party became the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932. As leader of the BUF, he publicly espoused antisemitism and sought alliances with other fascist leaders such as Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Mosley was imprisoned in May 1940, after the outbreak of the Second World War, and the BUF was banned. He was released in 1943 and, politically disgraced by his association with fascism, moved abroad in 1951, spending most of the remainder of his life in Paris and two residences in Ireland.

Edwin Meese is 92 today.

American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music Aaron Copland died on this day 33 years ago, aged 90. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as the "Dean of American Composers". The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his music are typical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. He is best known for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as "populist" and which the composer labeled his "vernacular" style. Works in this vein include the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid and Rodeo, his Fanfare for the Common Man and Third Symphony. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres, including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores.