Born in 1913 – Rosa Parks, American civil rights activist.
“I learned to put my trust in God and to see Him as my strength. Long ago I set my mind to be a free person and not to give in to fear.”
Also, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Politics are not the task of a Christian.”
Born in 1889 – Carl Theodor Dreyer, Danish director and screenwriter.
Above: Still from Dreyer’s 1955 film Ordet.
Previously: Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring.
Born in 1866 – Enrique Simonet, Spanish painter and academic.
Above: The Autopsy (alternately, Anatomy of the Heart; She had a Heart!) 1890.
In 2003 – Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during the reentry of mission STS-107 into the Earth’s atmosphere, killing the seven astronauts on board.
Born in 1915 – Thomas Merton, American monk and author.
“Hope of attaining true freedom by purely political means has become an insane delusion.”
“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.”
Born in 1860–Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright and short story writer .
“The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.”
Born in 1805 – Samuel Palmer, English painter and etcher.
Above: A Dream in the Apennine (1864)
Born in 1953 – Lucinda Williams, American singer-songwriter.
Listen to Pineola from the 1992 album Sweet Old World.
Born in 1882 – Virginia Woolf, English writer.
“Let us try to drag up into consciousness the subconscious Hitlerism that holds us down. It is the desire for aggression; the desire to dominate and enslave. Even in the darkness we can see that made visible. We can see shop windows blazing; and women gazing; painted women; dressed-up women; women with crimson lips and crimson fingernails. They are slaves who are trying to enslave. If we could free ourselves from slavery we should free men from tyranny. Hitlers are bred by slaves.“
–from Woolf’s 1940 essay “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid”
Born in 1888 – Lead Belly, American folk/blues musician and songwriter.
“Look a here people, listen to me, Don’t try to find no home in Washington, D.C. Lord, it’s a bourgeois town, it’s a bourgeois town.”
Also: Federico Fellini
Number 5 