Linus Torvalds (born December 28, 1969) is a Finnish software engineer, American naturalized, who is the creator, and former principal developer, of the Linux kernel, which became the kernel for operating systems (and many distributions of each) such as GNU and years later Android and Chrome OS. He also created the distributed revision control system Git. Torvalds believes “open source is the only right way to do software.” He currently resides in a suburb of Portland, Oregon.
Note: Despite his generous open-source software contributions, Torvalds is notorious for his gruff attitude that serves as a form of self-deprecation: “I’m not a nice person, and I don’t care about you. I care about the technology and the kernel—that’s what’s important to me.” – Linus Torvalds
Eartha Kitt was an American actress, singer, cabaret star, dancer, stand-up comedian, activist and voice artist. She’s known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 recordings of “C’est Si Bon” and the enduring Christmas novelty smash “Santa Baby.” In 1967, she starred as Catwoman in the third and final season of the television series Batman. Orson Welles once called her the “most exciting woman in the world.” Kitt began her career in 1943 and appeared in the 1945 original Broadway production of the musical Carib Song. In the early 1950s, she had six U.S. Top 30 hits, including “Uska Dara” and “I Want to be Evil.” In 1968, her career in America suffered after she made anti-war statements at an LBJ White House luncheon. Kitt was born on January 17, 1927 and died on December 25, 2008.
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father of the United States, one of the most influential interpreters and promoters of the U.S. Constitution, the founder of the nation’s financial system, the founder of the Federalist Party, the father of the United States Coast Guard and the founder of The New York Post. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was the primary author of the economic policies of the George Washington administration. Hamilton was born on January 11, 1755 (or 1757) in the British West Indies in the Caribbean. He died on July 12, 1804, following a famous pistol duel with Vice President Aaron Burr, his political rival, in which he was mortally wounded.
Note: Since the beginning of the American Civil War, Hamilton has been depicted on more denominations of U.S. currency than anyone else. He has appeared on the $2, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $1,000. His portrait has continued to appear on U.S. postage and currency, and most notably appears on the modern $10 bill.
Michael Stipe is an American singer, songwriter, musician, film producer, music video director and visual artist. He was the lead singer of the alternative rock band R.E.M. from their formation in 1980 until their dissolution in 2011. The band was pivotal in the development of the alternative rock genre. R.E.M. released 15 studio albums, including Out of Time (1991) and Automatic for the People (1992), as well as numerous live albums and compilation albums. Stipe was in charge of R.E.M.’s visual image, often selecting album artwork and directing many of the band’s music videos. Outside the music industry, he runs his own film production companies, C-Hundred (C-00) and Single Cell Pictures. Stipe is also noted for his social and political activism. He was born on January 4, 1960.
Note: The 8-bit blue unicorn/rainbow creature I’ve drawn to represent Scott C. is based on some of the smiling entities he painted for his Tender Times show in 2012. Almost everything he creates is smiling. Here’s a fun 8-bit showdown: Scott Campbell vs. Don Hertzfeldt.
Jean‑Michel Basquiat was one of the most important American artists of the 20th century. He first achieved notoriety as part of SAMO, an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s where the hip-hop, post-punk and street art movements had coalesced. By the 1980s, Basquiat was exhibiting his neo-expressionist paintings in galleries and museums internationally. His art appropriated poetry, drawing and painting. Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960 and died of a heroin overdose at his art studio at age 27, on August 12, 1988.
Betty White is an American actress, comedian, singer, author producer and television personality. She is best known for her television roles on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1973-77) and The Golden Girls (1985-92). In a career that has spanned more than 70 years, White has won six Emmy Awards (five for acting) and received 23 Emmy nominations. She is the only woman to have won an Emmy in all performing comedic categories. In May 2010, White became the oldest person to guest-host Saturday Night Live, for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award. She also holds the record for longest span between Emmy nominations for performances—her first was in 1951 and her most recent was in 2011, a span of 60 years—and became the oldest nominee overall as of 2014, at age 92. She is also the oldest winner of a competitive Grammy Award, which she won in 2012 for a spoken word recording. Due to her pioneering efforts in early TV and her acting legacy, pretty much everyone has given White a lifetime achievement award. She was born on January 17, 1922.
Haruki Murakami is a contemporary Japanese writer. Murakami has been translated into 50 languages and his best-selling books have sold millions of copies. His most notable works include A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995), Kafka on the Shore (2002) and 1Q84 (2009-2010). He has also translated a number of English works into Japanese, from Raymond Carver to J. D. Salinger. Murakami’s fiction, still criticized by Japan’s literary establishment as un-Japanese, was influenced by Western writers from Chandler to Vonnegut by way of Brautigan. It is frequently surrealistic and melancholic or fatalistic, marked by a Kafkaesque rendition of the “recurrent themes of alienation and loneliness” he weaves into his narratives. Murakami was born on January 12, 1949.
Kim Jong-un is the supreme leader of the ironically named Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). He is the son of Kim Jong-il (1941-2011) and the grandson of Kim Il-sung (1912-1994). He was officially declared the supreme leader following the state funeral for his father on December 28, 2011. He is the third and youngest son of Kim Jong-il and his consort Ko Yong-hui. From late 2010, Kim Jong-un was viewed as heir apparent to the leadership of the nation, and following his father’s death, he was announced as the “Great Successor” by North Korean state television. Kim was born on January 8, 1983. At 32 years of age, he is the first North Korean leader born after the country’s founding and the world’s youngest head of state.
Nicolas Coppola, known professionally as Nicolas Cage, is an American actor and filmmaker. Notable films from early in his acting career include Raising Arizona (1987) and Wild at Heart (1990). Cage received an Academy Award for his performance as an alcoholic Hollywood writer in Leaving Las Vegas (1995) before coming to the attention of wider audiences with mainstream films such as The Rock (1996), Face/Off (1997), Con Air (1997) and City of Angels (1998). He earned his second Academy Award nomination for his performance as Charlie and Donald Kaufman in Adaptation. (2002). Since then, he’s been in a lot of bad movies, but recent highlights include Kick-Ass (2010) and Joe (2014). Cage was born on January 7, 1964.
Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., known professionally as John Denver, was an American singer-songwriter, activist and humanitarian. Throughout his life, Denver recorded and released approximately 300 songs, about 200 of which he composed, with total sales of over 33 million. His signature songs include “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” “Annie’s Song,” “Rocky Mountain High” and “Sunshine on My Shoulders.” Denver was one of the most popular acoustic artists of the 1970s and one of its best-selling artists. In the following decade, he continued to record, but also focused on calling attention to environmental issues, lent his vocal support to space exploration and testified in front of Congress to protest against censorship in music. Denver was an avid pilot, and died in a single-fatality crash of his personal aircraft on October 12, 1997 at the age of 53. He was born on December 31, 1943.
P.S. The best John Denver movie moment is this driving scene in an ’84 sheepdog van. Harry Dunne: “I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this.” Lloyd Christmas: “I was thinking the same thing. That John Denver’s full of shit, man.”
Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States (1913-1921) and leader of the Progressive Movement. To date the only U.S. President to have held a Ph.D., he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910. Wilson induced a conservative Democratic Congress to pass a progressive legislative agenda, unparalleled until the New Deal in 1933. This included the Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Federal Farm Loan Act and an income tax. Wilson’s second term was dominated by American entry into World War I. For his sponsorship of the League of Nations, Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize. Wilson has consistently been ranked by scholars and the public as one of the top 10 presidents. He was born on this day in 1856 and died on February 3, 1924.
Dwyane Wade is an American professional basketball guard for the NBA’s Miami Heat. Named the 2006 Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated, Wade is one of the league’s most popular players. He was named to the All-Rookie team in 2004 and the All-Star team the following nine seasons (2005-2013). In his third season, Wade led the Miami Heat to its first NBA championship and was named the 2006 NBA Finals MVP. At the 2008 Summer Olympics, Wade won a gold medal and led the “Redeem Team” in scoring. In 2009, he led the league in scoring and earned his first NBA scoring title. After LeBron James joined the Heat in 2010, Wade and James led Miami to back-to-back NBA championships (2012 and 2013). Wade was born on this day in 1982.
Jerome David Salinger was an American writer who won acclaim early in life. In 1948, his critically acclaimed story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” appeared in The New Yorker magazine, which became home to much of his later work. In 1951, his novel The Catcher in the Rye was an immediate popular success, which led to public attention and scrutiny. Salinger became reclusive, publishing new work less frequently. He followed The Catcher in the Rye with a short story collection, Nine Stories (1953); a volume containing a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961); and a volume containing two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). He led a very private life for more than a half-century. Salinger published his final original work in 1965 and gave his last interview in 1980. He was born on this day in 1919 and died of natural causes on January 27, 2010.
P.S. Happy New Year! In November 2013, three unpublished Salinger stories from the 1940s were scanned into PDF form and leaked online. One of the stories, “The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls,” is about the Caulfield boys and is sort of a prequel to The Catcher in the Rye. It is stipulated in Salinger’s will that these stories are not to be published until 50 years after his death, but the Internet made other plans. If you miss the Glass family and Holden Caulfield and you’re eager for more rare Salinger stories, you may also want to track down an unauthorized compilation of Salinger’s 22 uncollected stories. These “lost” stories were all from the 1940s, just like the three leaked stories, with one exception (“Hapworth 16, 1924” was published in 1965). This lovely quote is from one of his early stories: “She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there, leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.” – J. D. Salinger, “A Girl I Knew“
Robert E. Lee was an American career military officer best known for having commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. When Virginia declared its secession from the Union in April 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his personal desire for the country to remain intact and despite the fact that President Abraham Lincoln had offered Lee command of a Union army. During the Civil War, Lee originally served as a senior military adviser to President Jefferson Davis. He soon emerged as a shrewd tactician and battlefield commander, winning numerous battles against far superior Union armies. Lee would ultimately surrender to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox in 1865. Other Confederate forces swiftly capitulated after Lee’s surrender. Lee became a great Southern hero of the Civil War and remains one of the most revered, iconic figures of American military leadership. He died on October 12, 1870.
Frederick William Voedisch was a manufacturer, American Civil War soldier and artist. He was born in Saxony, Germany on January 1, 1832 and trained as a baker. Frederick emigrated to New York in 1854 and worked there as a baker and sawmill manager before moving to Wisconsin in 1856. In 1862, Frederick enlisted as a private in the 20th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment for the Union Army at age 29 and was quickly promoted to a noncommissioned officer, third sergeant (moving from Company A to Company E). However, curiously, after the conclusion of hostilities in 1865, he was honorably discharged as a private. The Military History of Wisconsin details the hard times Frederick and his company endured. Following the war, he married Catherine Weber (née Runkel) in 1865 in Watertown, WI, and worked as a lumber manufacturing manager. In 1883, Frederick received the title to 160 acres of land in Fergus Falls, MN. In 1885, he moved his family farther west to North Dakota. Frederick applied for his Civil War pension in 1886 and died in the Dakotas in 1891 at age 59. He was survived by his German-immigrant wife Catherine and their children Dela and Alfred.
Frederick W. Voedisch is my great-great-great-grandfather. Before Heidi and I went to Europe last year, I created an Ancestry.com account and input a binder of genealogical data to create an online family tree. I did this primarily to share information with my cousins in Italy about their American relatives. You can imagine my surprise when I was contacted by a Civil War reenactor who owns Frederick’s Civil War rifle. The Springfield musket he owns was identified because the initials FWV are artfully engraved into the stock and there was only one Wisconsin soldier with those initials on the Civil War roster. After the war, Frederick probably returned home with his musket and had the barrel reamed slightly larger to turn it into a 20-gauge shotgun, making it a handy item on a farm. But by the time he moved west, cartridge guns had become common, and so he left his rather obsolete musket in Wisconsin. Now, in 2013, Frederick’s musket remains in Wisconsin in its original condition (other than the slight reaming of the inside of the barrel). The lock works and it even includes its ramrod. I was amazed to learn so much about an object once carried by my 3rd-great-grandfather. Frederick’s daughter Dela is my great-great-grandmother.
Gino Marchetti is a retired National Football League (NFL) player who played for the Dallas Texans (1952) and the Baltimore Colts (1953-1966). He was voted “the greatest defensive end in pro football history” by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972. Marchetti won his first of two NFL championships in the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Colts and the Giants, which is often referred to as “The Greatest Game Ever Played” in NFL history. In 1959, Marchetti founded Gino’s Hamburgers. Gino’s became a successful East Coast regional fast food chain and had 313 company-owned locations when it was sold to Marriott in 1982, which converted many of the restaurants to Roy Rogers. In 2010, Marchetti revived the Gino’s name with Gino’s Burgers & Chicken, which first opened in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
Born in the historic coal-mining town of Smithers, West Virginia on January 2, 1927, Gino Marchetti is my first cousin, twice removed. Now 86 years old, he is the most famous member of my extended Italian-American family.
Jacques Dominique Wilkins is a retired American professional basketball player (born in France) who primarily played for the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA. Wilkins was a nine-time NBA All-Star, and one of the best dunkers in NBA history, earning the nickname “The Human Highlight Film.” Wilkins participated in five slam dunk contests (1984, 1985, 1986, 1988 and 1990), winning two. In 1985, he beat rookie Michael Jordan in the finals. In 1986, Wilkins was defeated by his 5′ 7″ teammate, Spud Webb. In 1988, the highly anticipated rematch of Wilkins vs. Jordan resulted in Jordan winning 147 to 145, controversially.
As a kid, I tried to imitate the 1988 NBA Slam Dunk Contest dunks on the NERF basketball hoop attached above my bedroom door. Or, even better, on the metal basketball hoop mounted in my late grandparents’ basement that my dad built from Erector Set pieces in the late 1950s. These dunks were essentially the practice of accidentally slamming my nine-year-old extremities into the door frame or doorknob as I contorted my body to get a foam ball to pass through an orange plastic hoop. And the crowd goes wild.
Janis Joplin was an American singer-songwriter. She first rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of the psychedelic-acid rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, and later as a solo artist. Joplin was a popular act at the Monterey Pop Festival and became one of the major attractions at Woodstock. Her fans referred to her stage presence as “electric.” At the height of her career, Joplin was known as “The Queen of Rock and Roll” as well as “The Queen of Psychedelic Soul.” She was born on January 19, 1943 and died of a drug overdose in 1970 (just 16 days after Jimi Hendrix died, also at age 27).
I’ve done easier things in life than attempt to reproduce Woodstock-era tie-dyed clothing as primitive pixel art.
Jenny Lewis is an American singer-songwriter, musician and actress. She was the primary vocalist of the indie rock band Rilo Kiley and has released two solo albums. Lewis currently performs as part of the duo Jenny & Johnny with boyfriend Johnathan Rice. As a child actor in the 1980s and 1990s, she appeared in a number of TV shows, movies and commercials. Lewis was born on this day in 1976 in Las Vegas, Nevada. We’ll all be portions for foxes.
Frederick W. Voedisch – No. 606
Frederick William Voedisch was a manufacturer, American Civil War soldier and artist. He was born in Saxony, Germany on January 1, 1832 and trained as a baker. Frederick emigrated to New York in 1854 and worked there as a baker and sawmill manager before moving to Wisconsin in 1856. In 1862, Frederick enlisted as a private in the 20th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment for the Union Army at age 29 and was quickly promoted to a noncommissioned officer, third sergeant (moving from Company A to Company E). However, curiously, after the conclusion of hostilities in 1865, he was honorably discharged as a private. The Military History of Wisconsin details the hard times Frederick and his company endured. Following the war, he married Catherine Weber (née Runkel) in 1865 in Watertown, WI, and worked as a lumber manufacturing manager. In 1883, Frederick received the title to 160 acres of land in Fergus Falls, MN. In 1885, he moved his family farther west to North Dakota. Frederick applied for his Civil War pension in 1886 and died in the Dakotas in 1891 at age 59. He was survived by his German-immigrant wife Catherine and their children Dela and Alfred.
Frederick W. Voedisch is my great-great-great-grandfather. Before Heidi and I went to Europe last year, I created an Ancestry.com account and input a binder of genealogical data to create an online family tree. I did this primarily to share information with my cousins in Italy about their American relatives. You can imagine my surprise when I was contacted by a Civil War reenactor who owns Frederick’s Civil War rifle. The Springfield musket he owns was identified because the initials FWV are artfully engraved into the stock and there was only one Wisconsin soldier with those initials on the Civil War roster. After the war, Frederick probably returned home with his musket and had the barrel reamed slightly larger to turn it into a 20-gauge shotgun, making it a handy item on a farm. But by the time he moved west, cartridge guns had become common, and so he left his rather obsolete musket in Wisconsin. Now, in 2013, Frederick’s musket remains in Wisconsin in its original condition (other than the slight reaming of the inside of the barrel). The lock works and it even includes its ramrod. I was amazed to learn so much about an object once carried by my 3rd-great-grandfather. Frederick’s daughter Dela is my great-great-grandmother.