December 17th
William Safire 1929-
Journalist; born in New York, NY; won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
Joseph Henry (1797 - 1898) - Physicist who worked as surveyor then went into several different fields of science. Guess he couldn't hold a job.
Sir Humphrey Davy (1778 - 1829) - Chemist, born in Penzance, Cornwall, SW England, UK. He investigated the respiration of gases, and discovered the anaesthetic effect of laughing gas. He discovered potassium, sodium, barium, strontium, calcium, and magnesium. In 1815 he invented the miner's safety lamp. (Probably spent many years researching the laughing gas
)
Horace Goldin (1874 - 1939) - Magician; born in Vilna, Russia. Emigrating to the U.S.A. as a teenager, he was an illusionist. One of the first to "saw" a woman in half, he switched to a buzz saw when others copied him. ( Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz )
Arthur Edwin Kennelly (1861 - 1939) - Electrical engineer; born in Bombay, India. Raised in England, he left school at age 13 and taught himself physics while working as a telegrapher. He emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1887 to become Edison's electrical assistant; he left in 1894 to be a consulting engineer, then taught at Harvard (1902--30) and occasionally at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Another snoozer)
Edwin J. Cohn (1892 - 1953) - Biochemist; born in New York City. A pioneer in protein chemistry, he spent his career at Harvard Medical School (1920--53). He performed research on pernicious anemia (1926--32), which led to the eventual isolation of vitamin B12 by other scientists. During World War II, he planned and directed blood fractionation programs for the armed forces; after the war he continued his research on medical uses of such blood components as plasma, gamma globulin, and albumin. (Damn. Another scientist... Why couldn't on of them be Ghengis Khan or somebody interesting)
Arthur Fiedler (1894 - 1979) - Conductor; born in Boston, Mass. Trained as a violinist in Boston and Berlin, he joined the Boston Symphony (1915--30), first playing violin, then viola. Determined to conduct, he founded his own chamber orchestra, the Boston Sinfonietta, in 1924. In 1929 he launched the Esplanade summer series, free concerts by the Boston Symphony, along the Charles River. In 1930 he took over the Boston Pops Orchestra and for almost a half century he was the most beloved conductor of light-classical music in the U.S.A.
Bill Pullman (1953 - ) - Under the catagory of "Who?"
Actor; films include Independence Day and Twister
Milla Jovovich (1975 - ) - (Finally one I recognize... Whooohooo! The feisty redhead from "Fifth Element"...
)
Model, actress; films include Dazed and Confused and The Messenger
