Born

1875 Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875)  American soldier and author

“Tarzan of the Apes,” by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The All-Story Magazine, October,1912.

1946 Barry Gibb, Manx-English singer-songwriter and producer

1939 Lily Tomlin, American actress, comedian, screenwriter, and producer

1957 Gloria Estefan, Cuban-American singer-songwriter and actress

1970 Padma Lakshmi, Indian-American actress and author

Died

Dreamers

Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.

Siegfried Sassoon

1967 – Siegfried Sassoon, English captain (WW1) and poet (b. 1886)

2012 Hal David, American lyricist (b. 1921)

“Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head (also known as the Bicycle Scene”

Published

I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate,
Was snach’d from AFRIC’s fancy’d happy seat;
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parents’ breast?
Steel’d was that soul and by no mis’ry mov’d
That from a father seiz’d his babe belove’d;
Such-such my case; and can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

1773 Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by  Phillis Wheatley

explore her life and legacy

image: The Atlantic

1952 The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway (check out a 2019 critique)

Moments in Music

1957 A young Jimi Hendrix catches Elvis Presley’s performance in Seattle

1977 Rush releases A Farewell to Kings, the band’s first Gold-selling album

1981 Hall & Oates release Private Eyes

the End

1914 Martha, last known passenger pigeon, dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo (watch Smithsonian video)