If they were still alive....

...today would be the birthday of:

Buster Crabbe, 103.  He was a former Olympian who went on to portray both "Flash Gordon" and "Tarzan" in films.

                                                                                                                   (Dickens in 1850, age 38)
Charles Dickens, perhaps the world's most-read novelist, would be 199.

Former slave, orator, writer, statesman and leading abolitionist--Frederick Douglass was born 194 years ago.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the "Little House on the Prairie" books, 144
.

Eubie Blake (L), American ragtime/jazz composer and musician, would be 128.

American novelist Sinclair Lewis (Elmer Gantry, Arrowsmith, Dodsworth), 126.


Baseball great Dan Quisenberry (Kansas City Royals, St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants), 58.  He was also a poet and known for his humorous epigrams, such as:
"I've seen the future and it's much like the present only longer."  Ironically, he died or brain cancer at the age of 45.