MILESTONES: December 20, birthdays for Jonah Hill, JoJo, Ashley Cole

December 20, 2018 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Jonah Hill Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

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NOTABLE PEOPLE born on this day include Emmy Award-winning actress Jenny Agutter, who was born in 1952; singer and activist Billy Bragg, who was born in 1957; author and poet Sandra Cisneros, who was born in 1954; soccer player Ashley Cole, who was born in 1980; singer and TV personality David Cook, who was born in 1982; psychic and clairvoyant Uri Geller, who was born in 1946; actor Jonah Hill, who was born in 1983; pop star JoJo, who was born in 1990; sociologist, educator and writer William Julius Wilson, who was born in 1935; and TV producer Dick Wolf, who was born in 1946.

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TODAY IS INTERNATIONAL HUMAN SOLIDARITY DAY. In connection with its observance of the first U.N. Decade for the Edification of Poverty, the U.N. General Assembly declared this date each year recalling that the Millennium Declaration identified solidarity as one of the fundamental and universal values that should underlie relations between peoples in the 21st century. For more information, visit un.org.

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SACAGAWEA DIED ON THIS DAY IN 1812. As a young Shoshone Indian woman, Sacagawea in 1805 travelled (with her two-month old son strapped to her back) with the Lewis and Clark expedition as an interpreter. It is said that the expedition could not have succeeded without her aid. Few other women have been so often honored. There are statues, fountains and memorials of her, and a mountain peak bears her name. In 2000, the U.S. Mint issued a $1 coin honoring her.

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SAMUEL MUDD WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1833. Mudd was convicted of conspiracy in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and sentenced to life imprisonment at Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas. The basis for his conviction was mainly that he gave medical aid to fleeing Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, who had a broken leg. He was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson in 1869. Mudd and his friends protested his innocence of complicity until his death in 1883 in Maryland.

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FRED MERKLE WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1888. He will forever occupy a place in baseball history for his part in the events in the 1908 game against the New York Giants and Chicago Cubs. Merkle was on first in the bottom of the ninth when the winning run apparently scored on a single. As was customary, he did not touch second base. Cubs second baseman Johnny Evers set off baseball’s greatest dispute by demanding that Merkle be called out, which he was. He died in Florida in 1956.

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THE AMERICAN POET LAUREATE WAS ESTABLISHED ON THIS DAY IN 1985. A bill empowering the Librarian of Congress to name, annually, a poet laureate in poetry was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. In return for a stipend as poet laureate and a salary as the consultant in poetry, the person named will present at least one major work of poetry and will appear at selected national ceremonies. The first poet laureate of the U.S. was Robert Penn Warren, appointed to that position by the Librarian of Congress in 1986. Other poets laureate have included Rita Dove, Robert Pinsky, Billy Collins and W.S. Merwin. Prior to 1985, the Library of Congress named consultants in poetry, and these included Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop and Gwendolyn Brooks.

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Special thanks to “Chase’s Calendar of Events” and Brooklyn Public Library.

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“If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new questions.” — philosopher Susanne Langer, who was born on this day in 1895