Born in 1959 – Paul Farmer, American anthropologist and physician.

“…a social justice approach should be central to medicine and public health. This could be very simple: the well should take care of the sick.”

Born in 1881: Spanish painter and sculptor, Pablo Picasso.

La Soupe, 1903.

Annie Edson Taylor was an American adventurer who, on her 63rd birthday, October 24, 1901, became the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

It’s the Feast Day of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, writer of The Consolation of Philosophy.

Born in 1982 – Heath Miller, tight end for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Born in 1929: Ursula K. Le Guin, American author.

“When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.” 

Born in 1940, Robert Pinsky, American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator.

“The test of whether it’s poetry is: does it sound beautiful when you say the words over, in your mind or your voice, with no skilled performer, no music, just the sounds and meanings in the words themselves.”

In 1950, Iran became the first government to accept technical assistance from the US under Truman’s Point Four Program, the aim of which was to make “the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.”

In 1987, in an effort to protect Kuwaiti shipping amid the Iran-Iraq War, the US Navy launched Operation Nimble Archer, an attack on two Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf. (Shown above.) The attack was a response to Iran’s missile attack three days earlier on a Kuwaiti oil tanker.

In 1968, the United States Olympic Committee suspended two sprinters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, for giving a “black power” salute as a protest during a medal ceremony in Mexico City.

Mabel Nadine, born in 2006.