Born in 1926 – Roger Corman, American filmmaker.
Born in 1932 – Andrei Tarkovsky, Russian film director and producer.
Above: A still from Tarkovsky’s film The Sacrifice.
Born in 1949 – Richard Thompson, English singer-songwriter and guitarist.
Listen to “A Heart Needs a Home” and “Walking on a Wire” with Linda Thompson.
And: Solo performances of “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” and “Beeswing”.
Born in 1947 – Emmylou Harris, American singer-songwriter.
Born in 1976 – Clarence Seedorf, Dutch-Surinamese footballer.
Born in 1685 – Johann Sebastian Bach, German organist and composer.
Above: "St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244: O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden"
And below: Bach, inspiring American pop artists, 300 years later.
“…I dreamed I was dying
And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly.”
In 1981 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John Hinckley, Jr.
Born in 1943 – Eric Idle, English actor, humorist, and singer.
Above: Idle as Roger the Shrubber, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Today, Japan commemorates Sen no Rikyu. Born in 1522, he was one of the most influential tea masters of Japan. Rikyu emphasized the wabi aesthetic, which stressed rusticity and simplicity in the tea ceremony and tearoom.
Born in 1879 – Edward Steichen, Luxembourgish-American photographer.
Above: The Pond-Moonlight, 1904
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