Honorable Mention: January 18, 1882: A.A. Milne. Alan Alexander wrote the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. Christopher Robin was named after his own son, and most of the characters after stuffed animals that Christopher had.
10. January 18, 1938: Curt Flood. He was about 2/3rds of the way through a career as one of the best center fielders in baseball history when he got traded against his will. Although he lost his court fight against the reserve clause, it paved the way for free agency in North American sports.
9. January 18, 1915: Syl Apps. He only played 10 seasons in the NHL, missing 3 due to World War II and retiring when he was only 33, and apparently not due to injury, either. But Charles Joseph Sylvanus Apps was exactly what team boss Conn Smythe imagined when he thought of the perfect Toronto Maple Leaf: Smart, patriotic, clean-living, and a true leader on and off the ice.
Apps captained the Leafs to the Stanley Cup in 1942, 1947 and 1948. The Leafs retired his Number 10, and he was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame and the NHL's 100th Anniversary 100 Greatest Players.
Honorable Mention: January 18, 1979: Brian Gionta. He helped the New Jersey Devils win the 2003 Stanley Cup, and later captained the Montreal Canadiens, the Buffalo Sabres, and the U.S. Olympic hockey team. He did these things despite being charitably listed as 5-foot-7.
I was once at a game where Zdeno Chara, 6-foot-9 and then with the Ottawa Senators, picked a fight with Gionta. After letting them fight for a full minute, the officials broke it up. Gionta was still holding his own against the big bully.
Dishonorable Mention: January 18, 1961: Mark Messier. Yes, he won 6 Stanley Cups, captaining 2 different teams to the Cup. Yes, he was one of the leading scorers in hockey history. But he was also a dirty player, and he was also the Captain of the New York Rangers who shattered my Devils' dream in 1994 -- only to see them win 3 Stanley Cups in the next 9 years, when neither the Rangers nor the Edmonton Oilers have won a Cup since.
And remember: He's not only the Hair Club Team Captain, he's also a client.
Dishonorable Mention: January 18, 1971: Josep "Pep" Guardiola. He was a very good player for FC Barcelona. Then he went into management. It could be argued that no one has done, or at least allowed, more cheating in sports than he has. At Barcelona in his native Spain, Bayern Munich in Germany, and Manchester City in England, he's had teams that were usually good enough to win without cheating, but they've always done it anyway.
I put it this way: If the rules were always properly applied to "Fraudiola" and his teams, he would now be managing in Spanish soccer's 2nd division, and Lionel Messi would have been just another good player, making people wonder what he could have done had he not been shorter than Brian Gionta.
8. January 18, 1941: David Ruffin. Lead singer on most of The Temptations' hits from 1965 to 1968, he also had some solo hits. Drugs made him the kind of person who got fired from a big group, and eventually killed him.
7. January 18, 1955: Kevin Costner. A great acting career? He built it, and we came.
6. January 18, 1782: Daniel Webster. One of the few people to represent 2 different States in the U.S. Congress, he served in the House of Representatives from a District in his native New Hampshire, and later from one in Massachusetts.
He served Massachusetts in the Senate, and his speeches in support of the Union and against secessionist Southern Senators made him one of the most admired Senators ever. He also served as U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents William Henry Harrison, John Tyler and Millard Fillmore.
5. January 18, 1849: Edmund Barton. Among the writers of the Constitution of Australia, he was named the country's 1st Prime Minister, and 1 of the 1st 3 Justices of its Supreme Court.
4. January 18, 1892: Oliver Hardy. In 1921, already an established comic actor, sometimes billed as "O.N. Hardy" or "Babe Hardy," the rotund Georgian met English actor Stan Laurel, and appeared in a silent film with him.
In 1927, they met up again, and formed a comedy team that lasted 30 years, until Hardy's death. My grandmother was a huge Laurel & Hardy fan, and their fame was such that, in the 1970s, cartoon images of them could be shown alongside Scooby-Doo and his friends, and my generation still recognized them.
3. January 18, 1904: Cary Grant. A man so suave and stylish, he said of himself, "Even I want to be Cary Grant!"
2. January 18, 1911: Danny Kaye. Daniel David Kaminsky was born in Brooklyn, as, 15 years later, was Melvin James Kaminsky. As far as I can tell, Danny Kaye and Mel Brooks were not related. But before Brooks, there was Kaye, doing very similar things with comedy.
The difference was, while Brooks could make anybody laugh, Kaye could also sing and dance. And his work with UNICEF made him beloved to generations of children.
1. January 18, 1937: John Hume. He got the opposing sides in Northern Ireland to make peace. 'Nuff said.
Still alive as of this writing: Gionta, Messier, Guardiola, Costner.