MILESTONES: May 6, birthdays for George Clooney, Gabourey Sidibe, Tom Bergeron

May 6, 2019 Brooklyn Eagle

George Clooney. AP Photo/Joel Ryan

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NOTABLE PEOPLE born today include TV personality Tom Bergeron, who was born in 1955; former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was born in 1953; former hockey player Martin Brodeur, who was born in 1972; actor George Clooney, who was born in 1961; actor Alan Dale, who was born in 1947; actress Roma Downey, who was born in 1960; actress Leslie Hope, who was born in 1965; actor Ben Masters, who was born in 1947; baseball great Willie Mays, who was born in 1931; basketball player Chris Paul, who was born in 1985; musician Bob Seger, who was born in 1945; Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, who was born in 1934; actress Gabourey Sidibe, who was born in Brooklyn in 1983; and actress Lynn Whitfield, who was born in 1953.

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ON THIS DAY IN 1954, British runner Roger Bannister made history when he broke the four-minute mile, running it in a time of 3:59.4. Bannister was running for the British Amateur Athletic Association in a meet at Oxford University when he recorded the record-breaking time.

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SIGMUND FREUD, THE FATHER OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, was born in Freiberg, Moravia, on this date in 1856. Known for his groundbreaking psychoanalytic theory, and for postulating the existence of the Id, Ego and Superego as components of the unconscious, Freud revolutionized psychology with his focus on dreams and the subconscious. He died in London on Sept. 23, 1939.

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RUSSELL STOVER, whose name became synonymous with elegant chocolate bonbons, was born on this date in 1888 in Alton, Kansas, in a sod house. Stover, along with Clara, his wife, started the eponymous brand — sold today in the recognizable yellow boxes — in 1923. The two-person operation was quickly successful; when Stover died in 1954, the company was selling some 11 million pounds of the confection annually.

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ON THIS DAY IN 1915, actor/director Orson Welles, Hollywood’s enfant terrible for much of his career, was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Welles was probably best known for his panic-inducing 1938 radio broadcast, via the Mercury Theatre, of “The War of the Worlds,” which had listeners across the country convinced that the Martians were invading Earth, and for his 1941 cinematic masterpiece, “Citizen Kane,” based loosely on the life of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Welles died on October 10, 1985 in Los Angeles.

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

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“A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.” — Orson Welles, who was born on this date in 1915.