People Who Share My Birthday – July 9th

Ferdinand II, King of Bohemia/Hungary/German Emperor, 1619-37 (1578)

J Schopenhauer, writer (1776)

Thomas Davenport, invented 1st commercial electric motor (1802)

Elias Howe, Spencer Massachusetts, invented sewing machine (1819)

Nikola Tesla, born in Croatia, electrical engineer/inventor, Tesla Coil (1856)

Daniel Guggenheim, U.S., Guggenheim Museum (1856)

Franz Boas, anthropologist/linguist, Mind of Primitive Man (1858)

H V Kaltenborn, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, newscaster, “There’s Good News Tonight” (1878) [I remember sitting on my maternal grandfather’s lap after dinners during WWII and listening to Kaltenborn on the radio]

Samuel Eliot Morison, historian, Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1887) [Still the best biograph of Columbus and an account of his four voyages. I have it on my bookshelf and it’s one of the few books I’ll be taking with me to Panama]

Barbara Cartland, romance author (1901)

John Archibald Wheeler, born in Florida, American theoretical physicist, coined terms black hole, wormhole (1911)

Edward Heath, British Prime Minister, 1970-74 (1916)

Ed Ames, born in Malden, Massachusetts, actor, Mingo-Daniel Boone (1927)

Vince Edwards, born in Brooklyn, New York, actor, Ben Casey, Matt Lincoln (1928)

Lee Hazlewood, born in Oklahoma, singer, baritone, songwriter, record producer (1929)

J. P. Getty, US/British oil magnate/billionaire, Getty Oil (1932)

Donald Rumsfeld, politician (1932) [I just threw up in my mouth a little bit]

Richard Roundtree, Shaft (1937)

Brian Dennehy, actor, (1938)

Richard Staigg Philbrick, blogger (1942)

Dean Koontz, U.S., sci-fi author (1945)

O. J. Simpson (1947) [Do you think he’ll be getting a birthday cake?]

Jimmy Smits, actor (1955)

Tom Hanks (1956)

Argentina also declared it’s independence from Spain on this date in 1816