July 8

July 8 is the birthdate of architect Philip Johnson. With his thick, round-framed glasses, he was the most recognizable figure in American architecture for many years. His early work was characterized by the use of glass, and his masterpiece was the Glass House (1949), which he designed as his own residence, set in a private landscape in New Canaan, CT, with views as its “walls.” It is now a historic landmark. The transparent, minimalist design was influenced by Johnson’s mentor, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Johnson died in the Glass House (pictured) in 2005 at age 98.

July 7

July 7 is the birthdate of Gustav Mahler, composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. His music is among the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers. … The fourth movement, adagietto, of the Fifth Symphony (1901-02) is perhaps Mahler's most famous single piece of music and the most frequently performed extract. It was famously used in Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film “Death in Venice” (in which Aschenbach is a stand-in for Mahler himself). Mahler wrote the adagietto as a love song to his wife, Alma. Hearing the Fifth has been described as a “transforming experience.”

July 6

Answer: “Born on July 6, he created and produced the game show Jeopardy! (which began in 1964), and credited his wife with the idea for the show.” Question: “Who was Merv Griffin?” … The original Jeopardy! TV show was cancelled in 1975, revived briefly in the late 1970s with Art Fleming as host, then restarted in syndication in 1984 with host Alex Trebek. Merv earned more royalties from the Jeopardy! theme song, which he composed, than from the show itself. … He later became a real estate magnate and died extremely wealthy in 2007. Pictured: his grave stone in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, California.

July 5

July 5 is the birthdate of Phineas Taylor Barnum, who founded what became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He called himself a “showman,” but he was also a scam artist, businessman, promoter of hoaxes -- and a politician in Connecticut (uh, why am I not surprised). Barnum is erroneously credited with coining the phrase "There's a sucker born every minute." The origin of the phrase in unclear.

July 4

The great Stephen Foster was born on July 4th, 1826 -- appropriate for the song writer who turned out to be the "father of American music." His songs include "Oh! Susanna," "Camptown Races," "Old Folks at Home" ("Swanee River"), "My Old Kentucky Home," "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" and "Beautiful Dreamer." Although many of his songs had Southern themes, Foster never lived in the South and visited it only once (he was born near Pittsburgh). He died impoverished in New York at age 37.

July 3

July 3 is the birthdate of Franz Kafka. His novella The Metamorphosis was published in 1915, but not one of his full-length novels was either finished or published in his lifetime. That has not prevented him from being regarded as one of the key literary figures of the 20th century. He died one month short of his 41st birthday in 1924.

July 2

July 2 is the birthdate of author Hermann Hesse, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. His ninth book was Siddhartha (1922), published in the United States in 1951. The huge popularity of this book (and others by Hesse) in the United States from the 1960s onward was partly fueled by counter-cultural comments from Dr. Timothy Leary, as well as a legitimate quest for enlightenment among an enlarged population of university students.

July 1

July 1 is the birthdate of professor William Strunk, who taught English at Cornell for 46 years and first published this "little book," The Elements of Style, in 1918 for students in his classes. It was revised in the late 1950s by Strunk’s former student, E.B. White, writer and contributor to The New Yorker magazine.

June 30

June 30 is the birthday of Robert Ballard, former U.S. Navy officer and professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. He is noted for his work in maritime archaeology and the archaeology of shipwrecks. He discovered the wreck of the RMS Titanic in the North Atlantic on September 1, 1985. . . . You know what happened next: movies, books, tchotchkes, the careers of Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet . . . Few people realize, however, that Ballard’s trip in the summer of 1985 was financed by the U.S. Navy for secret reconnaissance of the wreckage of two Navy nuclear-powered attack submarines, the USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher, which sank in the 1960s, not for the Titanic.

June 29

June 29 is the birthdate of Slim Pickens (real name: Louis Burton Lindley, Jr.). He's known for his role as Taggart in “Blazing Saddles” (1974), and even better known for his role as Major T.J. “King” Kong in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” (1964), in which he memorably closes the movie with enthusiastic bronco-busting on the back of a nuclear warhead. For that one scene, Pickens had to endure more than 100 takes. Major Kong memorably volunteered the information that we all probably have “some pretty strong personal feelin's about nuclear combat.”