Born this week
Sunday August 30th, 2026
Kin Hubbard
September 1868 – December 26, 1930
No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more that she can be witty by only the help of speech.
Frank McKinney Hubbard was an American cartoonist, humorist, and journalist better known by his pen name "Kin" Hubbard. He was creator of ...
Freddie Mercury
September 5, 1946 – November 24, 1991
I got my diploma from Ealing College of Art, in graphics and illustration.
Freddie Mercury was a British singer-songwriter and producer, best known as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the rock band Queen. As a ...
Maria Montessori
August 31, 1870 – May 6, 1952
We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.
Maria Tecla Artemesia Montessori was an Italian physician and educator best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name, and ...
Edward Thorndike
August 31, 1874 – August 9, 1949
Just as the science and art of agriculture depend upon chemistry and botany, so the art of education depends upon physiology and psychology.
Edward Lee "Ted" Thorndike was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University. His ...
Henry George
September 2, 1839 – October 29, 1897
The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive its organization is necessarily tyrannical.
Henry George was an American writer, politician and political economist, who was the most influential proponent of the land value tax and ...
Alan Ladd
September 3, 1913 – January 29, 1964
I'm working myself to death.
Alan Walbridge Ladd was an American actor and film and television producer. Ladd found success in film the 1940s and early 1950s, ...
Arthur Koestler
September 5, 1905 – March 1983
The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.
Arthur Koestler, CBE was a Hungarian-British author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, ...
John Cage
September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992
We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic ...
Theophile Gautier
August 30, 1811 – October 23, 1872
Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution.
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic. While Gautier was an ...
Bill Shankly
September 2, 1913 – September 29, 1981
Football (soccer) is a matter of life and death, except more important.
William "Bill" Shankly OBE was a Scottish footballer and manager who is best known for his time as manager of Liverpool. Shankly came from ...
Eldridge Cleaver
August 31, 1935 – May 1998
History could pass for a scarlet text, its jot and title graven red in human blood.
Leroy Eldridge Cleaver, better known as Eldridge Cleaver, was a writer, political activist, and convicted rapist who became an early leader ...
Daniel Burnham
September 4, 1846 – June 1912
Make big plans aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.
Daniel Hudson Burnham, FAIA was an American architect and urban designer. He was the Director of Works for the World's Columbian Exposition ...
Mary Renault
September 4, 1905 – December 13, 1983
Money buys many things... The best of which is freedom.
Mary Renault, born Eileen Mary Challans, was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece. In addition to ...
Louis Sullivan
September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924
But the building's identity resided in the ornament.
Louis Henry Sullivan was an American architect, and has been called the "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism". He is considered ...