August 5: French novelist Guy de Maupassant in 1850; poet and
critic Conrad Aiken in 1889; film director John Huston in 1906;
actor Robert Taylor in 1911; Swedish architect Raoul Wallenberg,
who’s credited with saving 100,000 Jews from the Nazis during World War II, in
1912; legendary guitarist Les Paul in 1915; astronaut Neil
Armstrong in 1930; actor John Saxon in 1935; actress Loni
Anderson in 1946, singer Samantha Sang in 1953; and actor Jonathan
Silverman in 1966

August 6: English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson in 1809;
Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons in 1881; Sir Alexander
Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, also in 1881; Western film star
Hoot Gibson and reporter Lowell Thomas, both 1892; silent film
actress Clara Bow in 1905; comedian Lucille Ball in 1911; actor
Robert Mitchum in 1917; L. Bruce Laingen, the highest-ranking
diplomat among the 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days, and former
airline executive Freddie Laker, both in 1922; artist Andy Warhol
in 1927; and actresses Catherine Hicks in 1951, Soleil Moon Frye
in 1976, and Romola Garai in 1982

August 7: Carl Ritter, the German co-founder of modern
geographical science, in 1779; the World War I Dutch spy and courtesan known as
Mata Hari (Margaret Gertrude Zelle) in 1876; actress Billie Burke
in 1885; British archaeologist and anthropologist Louis Leakey in 1903;
American statesman and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ralph J. Bunche in
1904; film director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause) in 1911;
comedian/producer Stan Freberg in 1926; singer B.J. Thomas and
humorist Garrison Keillor, both in 1942; actors John Glover in
1944 and David Duchovny (The X-Files) in 1960; and Academy Award
winner Charlize Theron in 1975

August 8: the United States’ first professional architect,
Charles Bullfinch, in 1763; American black explorer Matthew Henson
in 1866; Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata in 1879; poet Sara
Teasdale in 1884; author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (The
Yearling) in 1896; former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg in
1908; actress Sylvia Sidney in 1910; movie producer Dino
DeLaurentis in 1919; actor Rory Calhoun in 1922; aquatic actress
Esther Williams in 1923; actor Carl Switzer (Alfalfa in the Our
Gang series) in 1927; country singer Mel Tillis in 1932; actor
Dustin Hoffman in 1937; singer Connie Stevens in 1938; Mary
Elizabeth “Tipper” Gore, wife of former Vice President Al Gore, in 1948;
actor Keith Carradine in 1949; journalist Randy Shilts in 1951; TV
personality Deborah Norville in 1958; and Beatrice, Princess of
York, in 1988

August 9: English author and angler Izaak Walton in 1593;
pioneer Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget in 1896; English
actor/playwright Robert Shaw in 1927; Australian tennis star Rod
Laver in 1938; comedian David Steinberg in 1942; actor Sam
Elliot in 1944; heavyweight boxer Ken Norton in 1945; actresses
Melanie Griffith in 1957 and Amanda Bearse (Married…With
Children) in 1958; pop singer Whitney Houston in 1963; and actress
Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) in 1968

August 10: Edmund Jennings Randolph, the first U.S. attorney
general, in 1753; Herbert Hoover, 31st president of the United States, in
1874; actor Jack Haley in 1899; actresses Norma Shearer in 1900
and Rhonda Fleming in 1923; guitar maker Leo Fender in 1909;
singers Jimmy Dean and Eddie Fisher, both in 1928; rock musician
Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull in 1947; and actors Roseanna Arquette
in 1959 and Antonio Banderas in 1960

August 11: Author Robert Ingersoll in 1833; songwriter
Carrie Jacobs Bond (“I Love You Truly”) in 1862; art collector Joseph
Hirshhorn in 1899; actor Lloyd Nolan in 1902; author Alex
Haley in 1921; TV host Mike Douglas in 1925; actress Arlene
Dahl in 1927; TV preacher Jerry Falwell in 1933; actress Virna
Lisi in 1937; columnist Marilyn vos Savant, who claims to have the
world’s highest IQ, in 1946; pop singer Eric Carmen, formerly of the
Raspberries, in 1949; Apple computer co-founder Stephen Wozniak in 1950;
and former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, born Terry Gene Bollea, in
1953