I usually post the day's birthdays in jotter's High Impact Diaries but today there are so many interesting birthdays that I thought I would just do a diary instead.
If your birthday is today please let your fellow kossacks know in the comments.
Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas!
Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong
(born 25 December 1971), known mononymously as Dido (pronounced /ˈdaɪdoʊ/), is an English singer-songwriter.
Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan
(born 25 December 1957) is a musician and singer, best known as the original singer and songwriter of The Pogues.
Annie Lennox
(born 25 December 1954) is a Scottish recording artist, also known as being one member of the duo Eurythmics, which she formed in 1980. Lennox penned some of the band's best-known tracks, including "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", "Here Comes the Rain Again", "Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)" "There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)" and "Love Is a Stranger".
Sissy Spacek
(born Mary Elizabeth Spacek; December 25, 1949) is an American actress and singer. She won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as country star Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980). She has been nominated for an Oscar a total of six times. She is also known for her role as Carrie White in Brian De Palma's 1976 horror film Carrie, for which she received her first Academy Award nomination.
Barbara Ann Mandrell
(born December 25, 1948) is an American country music singer[1] best-known for a 1970s–1980s series of Top 10 hits and TV shows that helped her become one of country's most successful female vocalists of the 1970s and 1980s.[1] She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009.
James William "Jimmy" Buffett
(born December 25, 1946) is a singer, songwriter, author, businessman, and movie producer. He is best known for his music, which often portrays an "island escapism" lifestyle. Together with his Coral Reefer Band, Buffett's musical hits include "Margaritaville" (No. 234 on RIAA's list of "Songs of the Century"), and "Come Monday". He has a devoted base of fans known as "Parrotheads".
Gary Sandy
(born December 25, 1945) is an American actor, who starred as program director Andy Travis on the television sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati.
Rodman "Rod" Edward Serling
(December 25, 1924 – June 28, 1975) was an American screenwriter, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues including censorship, racism, and anti-war politics.
Cabell "Cab" Calloway III
(December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American jazz singer and bandleader.
Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the United States' most popular African American big bands from the start of the 1930s through the late 1940s. Calloway's band featured performers including trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry, New Orleans guitar ace Danny Barker, and bassist Milt Hinton. Calloway continued to perform until his death in 1994 at the age of 86.
Humphrey DeForest Bogart
(December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957[1][2]) was an American actor.[3] He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.[4][5] The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema.
After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film. His first great success was as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), and this led to a period of typecasting as a gangster with films such as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and B-movies like The Return of Doctor X (1939).
His breakthrough as a leading man came in 1941, with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. The next year, his performance in Casablanca raised him to the peak of his profession and, at the same time, cemented his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side. Other successes followed, including To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948), with his wife Lauren Bacall; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); The African Queen (1951), for which he won his only Academy Award; Sabrina (1954) and The Caine Mutiny (1954). His last movie was The Harder They Fall (1956). During a film career of almost thirty years, he appeared in 75 feature films.
More Famous Birthdays today:
Rickey Henley Henderson
(born Rickey Nelson Henley, December 25, 1958 in Chicago, Illinois) is a former Major League Baseball left fielder who played for nine teams from 1979 to 2003, including four stints with his original team, the Oakland Athletics. Nicknamed The Man of Steal, he is widely regarded as the sport's greatest leadoff hitter and baserunner.[1][2] He holds the major league records for career stolen bases, runs scored, unintentional walks and leadoff home runs. At the time of his last major league game in 2003, the ten-time American League (AL) All-Star ranked among the sport's top 100 all-time home run hitters and was its all-time leader in bases on balls. In 2009, he was inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Robert LeRoy Ripley
(December 25, 1890 – May 27, 1949)[1] was an American cartoonist, entrepreneur and amateur anthropologist, who created the world famous Ripley's Believe It or Not! newspaper panel series, radio show, and television show which feature odd 'facts' from around the world.
Conrad Nicholson Hilton
(December 25, 1887 – January 3, 1979) was an American hotelier and founder of the Hilton Hotels chain.
Clarissa Harlowe "Clara" Barton
(December 25, 1821 – April 12, 1912) was a pioneer American teacher, nurse, and humanitarian. She is best remembered for organizing the American Red Cross.
Sir Isaac Newton FRS
(4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727 [OS: 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726])[1] was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, and is considered by many scholars and members of the general public to be one of the most influential people in human history. His Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Latin for "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"; usually called the Principia), published in 1687, is probably the most important scientific book ever written. It lays the groundwork for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws, by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation; thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the Scientific Revolution.
Sources: FamousBirthdays.com and Wikipedia.