Born in 1879 – Will Rogers, American actor and screenwriter.

From his mock presidential campaign in 1928: “What does the farmer need? Obvious: ‘He needs a punch in the jaw if he believes that either of the parties cares a damn about him after the election.'”

Born in 1903 – Walker Evans, American photographer and journalist.

Above: Family Portrait, 1936.

William Edward “Bud” Fields, wife Lily Rogers Fields and infant daughter Lilian at their sharecropper cabin in Hale County, Alabama.

Also: American filmmaker, Hal Hartley.

Born in 1755 – Marie Antoinette, Austrian-French queen consort of Louis XVI of France.

Above: Marie-Antoinette en grand habit de cour, by Yann Caradec. (1778)

In 1611, Shakespeare’s The Tempest was performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.

Above:

Prospero and Miranda, by Henry Thomson. (1803)

Stephano, Trinculo and Caliban, by Johann Heinrich Ramberg. (1803)

Born in 1923 – Denise Levertov, American poet.

The Ache of Marriage

The ache of marriage:

thigh and tongue, beloved,
are heavy with it,
it throbs in the teeth

We look for communion
and are turned away, beloved,
each and each

It is leviathan and we
in its belly
looking for joy, some joy
not to be known outside it

two by two in the ark of
the ache of it.

Born in 1961 – Wynton Marsalis, American trumpet player, composer, and educator.

“The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel.”