When a librarian is tired and unable to come up with an interesting post, she resorts to trivia and factoids.  Hence, this birthday salute!
Born on this day:
1721 - Madame De Pompadour, mistress of French King Louis the 15th (what would we have named the hairdo?)
1776 - Charles Macintosh, Scotland, patented waterproof fabric (what would the Brits call their raincoats?)
1800 - Charles Goodyear, inventor (vulcanization process for rubber) (how would we get around?)
1808 - Andrew Johnson, Raleigh NC, 17th president (1865-69) (Discuss an alternate direction of the Reconstruction)
1914 - Billy Tipton, American musician (d. 1989) (Jazz pioneer born a woman, who lived as a man for most of her adult life)
1917 - Tom Bradley, American politician (d. 1998) (first, and so far only, African-American Mayor of Los Angeles)
1921 - Robert C. Baker, Inventor of the chicken nugget (d.
2006)
1937 - Mary Tyler Moore, actress (Mary Tyler Moore show, Ordinary People)
1938 - Jon Voight, Yonkers, NY, actor (Deliverance, Midnight Cowboy)
1946 - Laffit Pincay Jr, jockey (Kentucky Derby 1984, Belmont 1982-84, Swale)
1946 - Marianne Faithfull, Hampstead England, vocalist (Mick Jagger's main squeeze for a time in the '60s)
1951 - Yvonne Elliman, US actress/singer (Original Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar; I Don't Know How to
Love Him)
1972 - Jude Law, British actor (Cute foil for Robert Downey, Jr. in Sherlock Holmes flicks)
1973 - Theo Epstein, the Cubs' new general manager (formerly of Boston)