Born in 1953 – Jim Jarmusch, American director and screenwriter.

Above: Béatrice Dalle and Isaach de Bankolé in Jarmusch’s 1991 film, Night on Earth.

Born in 1882 – Pavel Florensky, Russian mathematician and theologian. In a work devoted to the geometrical interpretation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Fr. Pavel proclaimed that the geometry of imaginary numbers predicted by the theory of relativity for a body moving faster than light is the “geometry of the Kingdom of God.” Soviet authorities accused Florensky of agitation for the reference.

Above: The Philosophers: Pavel Florensky and Sergius Bulgakov, by the Russian painter Mikhail Nesterov (1917). Florensky on the left.

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.”

Born in 1954 – Cindy Sherman, American photographer and director.

Above: Untitled #92, 1981.

Born in 1904 – Cary Grant, English-American actor.

Above: Grant on the set of the 1963 film Charade.

Born in 1914 – William Stafford, American poet and author.

“Here’s how to count the people who are ready to do right: ‘One.’ ‘One.’ ‘One.’…”

Born in 1891 – Osip Mandelstam, Russian poet and translator. 

Above: Mandelstam after the first of two arrests.

“Only in Russia poetry is respected – it gets people killed.”

Born in 1875 – Albert Schweitzer, French-German pastor and physician.

“Do something wonderful. People may imitate it.”

On this day in 1968, Johnny Cash performed two sets at Folsom State Prison, California.