10. March 14, 1920: Hank Ketcham. He created the comic strip Dennis the Menace.
9. March 14, 1951: Jerry Greenfield. He and Ben Cohen founded Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1887: Sylvia Beach. She founded the bookstore chain Shakespeare and Company, and was a major supporter of writers who went on to become major novelists and poets.
Dishonorable Mention: March 14, 1921: S. Truett Cathy. He founded Chick-fil-A, but also put its bigoted policies into place.
8. March 14, 1958: Prince Albert II of Monaco. The son of Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace Kelly, he followed his grandfather and uncle, both named John Kelly, into competing in the Olympics, in his case the bobsled races. He is one of the world's leading environmental and energy activists.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1854: Thomas R. Marshall. Elected Governor of Indiana in 1908, he was nominated for Vice President on Woodrow Wilson's Democratic ticket in 1912, and they were re-elected in 1916. But when Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919, he refused to resign due to his ill health, because he didn't trust Marshall to do the job of President. Ironically, Marshall only outlived Wilson by 15 months. (He was 2 years older.)
Once, while presiding over the U.S. Senate, he heard Joseph Bristow of Kansas go on and on about "what this country needs." Marshall said for all to hear, "What this country really needs is a good five-cent cigar." Trying to contradict Marshall, but instead making his point for him, the humorist Franklin P. Adams (author of the short baseball poem "Tinker to Evers to Chance") said, "There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country. The trouble, is they cost a quarter. What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel."
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1912: Willard Wirtz. U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1962 to 1969, under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, he was the last surviving member of JFK's Cabinet. Although also a Chicagoan, he was not closely related to the Wirtz family that has owned the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks since 1966.
7. March 14, 1997: Simone Biles. No other gymnast of either gender has won as many medals in world competition. She won 4 Gold Medals and a Bronze Medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo (in 2021), she bravely battled, and announced, her mental health issues, and still won a Silver and a Bronze.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1912: Cliff Bastin. The left wing starred for North London soccer team Arsenal, helping them win 5 Football League titles and 2 FA Cups from 1930 to 1938. He scored 178 goals, a team record until 1997. He was also a member of the England team that did not enter the 1934 World Cup, but beat World Cup winners Italy in London.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1944:Václav Nedomanský. At a time when hockey players from Eastern Europe weren't allowed to play in the NHL -- by their own countries' choice, not Canada's or America's -- he helped Czechoslovakia win the Silver Medal at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France; and the Bronze Medal in 1972 in Sapporo, Japan. In 1972, he led them to the IIHF World Championship.
In 1974, after 12 seasons with Slovan ChZJD Bratislava, he defected to Canada. He played 2 seasons with the World Hockey Association's Toronto Toros, another with them after they moved to become the Birmingham Bulls, 5 with the Detroit Red Wings, and 1 more with the St. Louis Blues and New York Rangers. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2019.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1946: Wes Unseld. He is the greatest player in the history of the NBA franchise now known as the Washington Wizards. A 5-time All-Star, in 1968-69 the center was named NBA Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player, a feat only pulled off by one other player: Wilt Chamberlain.
He helped the team reach the NBA Finals as the Baltimore Bullets in 1971; and as the Washington Bullets in 1975, 1978 and 1979, winning in 1978, and being named Finals MVP. He was named to the Basketball Hall of Fame, and to the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players and 75th Anniversary 75 Greatest Players.
He had considerably less success as the Bullets'/Wizards' head coach. His son Wes Unseld Jr. never played in the NBA, but went into coaching, and is now the Wizards' head coach, making them the only father and son to be head coach of the same NBA franchise.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1956: Butch Wynegar. A 2-time All-Star with the Minnesota Twins, he caught Dave Righetti's no-hitter for the New York Yankees on July 4, 1983.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1960: Kirby Puckett. A 10-time All-Star with a .318 lifetime batting average and 6 Gold Gloves, he led the Minnesota Twins to the 1987 and 1991 World Series wins, his game-saving catch and 11th-inning walkoff home run in Game 6 key to the latter. An eye injury cut his career short, but he was still elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1969: Larry Johnson. The forward led the University of Nevada at Las Vegas to the 1990 National Championship. He was the NBA's 1992 Rookie of the Year with the Charlotte Hornets, and when Patrick Ewing went down with injury in the 1999 Playoffs, he led the New York Knicks to the Eastern Conference Championship.
Somewhat Honorable Mention: March 14, 1979: Nicolas Anelka. The forward could have been one of the greatest soccer players of his generation. But he was never satisfied, and became one of these players that teams always seemed to want, and then always seemed to want to get rid of.
He won the Premier League and FA Cup "Double" with Arsenal in 1998, the UEFA Champions League with Real Madrid in 2000, the Turkish league with Istanbul team Fenerbahçe, the PL and FA Cup Double with West London team Chelsea in 2010, and the Italian league with Juventus in 2013. He was too young to play on the France team that won the 1998 World Cup, but was with them when they won Euro 2000. He was not called up for the 2006 World Cup, in which France lost the Final on penalties, and his insubordination was part of the team's disaster at the 2010 World Cup. He has since managed teams in China and India.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1981: Bobby Jenks. A 2-time All-Star, he was the closer for the 2005 World Champion Chicago White Sox. He set a record, since broken, by retiring 41 consecutive batters faced. He retired with 173 saves.
6. March 14, 1933: Michael Caine. He became a legend in his homeland in the 1960s, starring in Zulu, Alfie and the original version of The Italian Job. A fan of Chelsea, he played a soccer-playing World War II prisoner of war in Escape to Victory. He played an idiot version of Sherlock Holmes in Without a Clue, and Ebenezer Scrooge in A Muppet Christmas Carol. He might have made a great villain in the 1960s Batman TV show, and he definitely made a great Alfred in the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Trilogy.
In the 1990s, there was a running joke that every movie being made had either Michael Caine or Gene Hackman in it. But they've only acted together once, in the 1977 World War II film A Bridge Too Far.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1941: Wolfgang Peterson. In 1981, he did what was previously thought impossible: He made a movie about German military personnel in World War II that made them look sympathetic: Das Boot (The Boat, in that case a U-boat, a submarine). He's also directed The NeverEnding Story, Enemy Mine, In the Line of Fire, Outbreak, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm and Troy.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1965: Kevin Williamson. He wrote the screenplays for Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, and created the TV shows Dawson's Creek and The Vampire Diaries.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1966: Elise Neal. She's been on the TV series The Hughleys and All of Us. She played Linda Sayers, Mrs. Gale, in the 2001 remake of Brian's Song; and Gladys Knight in Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B.
5. March 14, 1948: Billy Crystal. Is he the funniest man alive? Maybe not, but no person, living or dead, has made me laugh more than he has. But, in films like City Slickers, Mr. Saturday Night and 61*, he's also made me think. And I don't hate when that happens.
4. March 14, 1854: Paul Ehrlich. He won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in immunology, which included finding a cure for syphilis.
3. March 14, 1934: Gene Cernan. He flew on Gemini 9, Apollo 10 and Apollo 17, making him, along with Jim Lovell, 1 of only 2 people thus far to go into lunar orbit twice. As the commanding officer of Apollo 17, he left the surface on December 14, 1972. This made him, to this date, the last person to walk on the Moon. He later served as a technical adviser for ABC News' broadcasts of Space Shuttle launches.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1928: Frank Borman. Not many men possess the discipline and the brainpower necessary to graduate from West Point and Caltech, but he did. He flew on Gemini 7, and commanded Apollo 8, the 1st spacecraft to orbit the Moon. Time magazine named him and his crewmates Lovell and William Anders their Men of the Year for 1968, for giving a world socked with bad story after bad story a reason to hope at the end of the year.
2. March 14, 1933: Quincy Jones. He started out in 1951, writing musical arrangements for jazz legends like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington. When Elvis Presley made his 1st national TV appearances on the Dorsey Brothers' CBS Stage Show, Jones played trumpet in the band.
He spent much of the 1960s writing scores for movies, although the most familiar may be his 1962 composition "Soul Bossa Nova," which remained somewhat familiar until 1997, when it became the theme for the film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. He wrote the theme songs for several TV shows, including Ironside and Sanford and Son.
But he's best known as a producer. He produced albums for Frank Sinatra. His 1st Number 1 hit was Lesley Gore's "It's My Party" in 1963. He produced the 3 albums that turned Michael Jackson from first among equals in a singing quintet into the biggest star in the world: Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad. In between, he composed the theme song for The Cosby Show and produced the recording session for "We Are the World."
Show me someone else who worked with Frank, Elvis and Michael, all at their peaks.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1804: Johann Strauss I. In 1848, in the wake of the European Revolutions, he premiered the Radetzky March. His son Johann II composed The Blue Danube, and became known as the Waltz King.
Honorable Mention: March 12, 1912: Les Brown. His Band of Renown was one of the biggest of the 1940s, with Doris Day as lead singer. Before signing her, he had Betty Bonney sing lead on a song for Joe DiMaggio.
Honorable Mention: March 12, 1914: Lee Hays. The bass in the folksinging quartet The Weavers, he wrote "If I Had a Hammer."
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1922: Les Baxter. He sang with Mel Torme's Mel-Tones before becoming Nat King Cole's conductor, and then forming his own orchestra.
He had a Number 1 hit in 1956 that did not have Elvis Presley singing on it, which wasn't easy that year. In fact, it didn't have anybody singing on it: It was an instrumental titled "The Poor People of Paris." He later scored the "Beach Party" movies with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello; and, at the other end of the spectrum, Roger Corman's movies of Edgar Allan Poe stories starring Vincent Price. He died in 1996.
Honorable Mention: March 14, 1950: Rick Dees. In 1976, as a disc jockey in Memphis, he decided to parody the rising tide of disco with "Disco Duck." It may have worked too well, hitting Number 1. That got him an offer to move to a Los Angeles station, making him one of the biggest DJs in the country. The Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 has been nationally syndicated since 1983.
1. March 14, 1879: Albert Einstein. Time magazine named him its Person of the Century, and his name remains synonymous with genius. But then, compared to the rest of us, he sure seems like it. As the man himself said (and while he's one of the people to whom many fake quotes have been attributed, this one is legit), "Only two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former."
Still alive as of this writing: Greenfield, Prince Albert, Biles, Nedomansky, Wynegar, Johnson, Jenks, Caine, Petersen, Williamson, Neal, Crystal, Borman, Jones, Dees.