Born in 1866 – Erik Satie, French pianist and composer.

“I came into the world very young, in an age that was very old.”

Listen: Satie’s Gymnopédie No.1

Born in 1912 – Studs Terkel, American historian and author.

“I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it.”

Born in 1891 – Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian novelist and playwright.

“Everything passes away-suffering,pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the Earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?”

Previously: Bulgakov

Born in 1820 – Florence Nightingale, Italian-English nurse, social reformer, and statistician.

“Surgery removes the bullet out of the limb, which is an obstruction to cure, but nature heals the wound. So it is with medicine; the function of an organ becomes obstructed; medicine so far as we know, assists nature to remove the obstruction, but does nothing more. And what nursing has to do in either case, is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.”

Born in 1889 – Paul Nash, British painter.

Above: The Ypres Salient at Night (1918)

Also, in 1904 – Salvador Dalí

Born in 1909 – Maybelle Carter, American country musician and singer.

Listen: Hummingbird

Born in 1883 – José Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher, author, and critic.

“The most radical division that it is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: Those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection, mere buoys that float on the waves.”

Also: John Brown

Born in 1915 – Orson Welles, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter.

“A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.”

Above: Welles in Carol Reed’s 1949 film, The Third Man.

Previously: Welles

Born in 1813 – Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher.

“If I could prescribe only one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence.”

Previously: Kierkegaard, and Karl Marx

Born in 1796 – Horace Mann, American school advocate, politician, “father of American education.”

“School is the cheapest police.”

Previously: Mann