November 29

"Chronicles of Narnia" author CS Lewis born (1898); UN General Assembly approves plan to partition Palestine (1947); Warren Commission is established to investigate President Kennedy assassination (1963); RIP social activist Dorothy Day (1980); RIP Beatles guitarist George Harrison (2001)

November 27

The Nobel Prize is established (1895); Bruce Lee born (1940); Jimi Hendrix born (1942); Mars 2, a Soviet space probe, is first man-made object to reach Mars (1971); LGBT rights activist Harvey Milk is assassinated (1978). 

November 26

RIP abolitionist Sojourner Truth (1883); HBD National Hockey League (1917); Peanuts creator Charles Schulz born (1922); King Tut’s tomb is uncovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter (1922); HBD Tina Turner (1939).

November 25

Businessman Andrew Carnegie born (1835); Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” opens, is longest-running play in history (1952); President John F. Kennedy and his assassin Lee Harvey Oswald both buried (1963); RIP author Upton Sinclair (1968); Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies (2016).

November 22

RIP author Jack London (1917); HBD tennis star and social activist Billie Jean King (1943); President John F. Kennedy assassinated (1963); RIP author C.S. Lewis (1963); British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announces resignation (1990).

November 21

French philosopher Voltaire born (1694); Thomas Edison announces phonograph invention (1877); HBD Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk (1965); HBD baseball great Ken Griffey Jr. (1969); Robert Mugabe resigns as president of Zimbabwe after 37 years in office (2017).

November 20

Robert Kennedy born (1920); HBD Joe Biden (1942); Nuremberg trials against 24 Nazi war criminals begins (1945); HBD actress Bo Derek (1956); Microsoft Windows released (1985).

November 19

President James Garfield born (1831); Abraham Lincoln delivers Gettysburg Address (1863); Indira Gandhi, first and only female Prime Minister of India, born (1917); Ronald Reagan meets Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for first time (1985); Charles Manson dies while in prison (2017).

November 18

Abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth born (1797); HBD poet and novelist Margaret Atwood (1939); 918 die in a mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana (1978); Massachusetts becomes the first US state to recognize same-sex marriage (2003).

November 17

Did you know...
... that today is the birthday of acting greats Danny DeVito (1944), Dylan Walsh (1963), Rachel McAdams (1978), and Rock Hudson (1925). Celebrate their birthdays by watching some of your favorite classics!

Albert Camus

  (7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) An African-born French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. Awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature, the second youngest, after Rudyard Kipling

November 15

Articles of Confederation, the first US constitution, is passed (1777); Artist Georgia O’Keeffe born (1887); "Macho Man" Randy Savage born (1952); 2 million people protest Vietnam War across US (1969); RIP famed anthropologist Margaret Mead (1978).

November 14

French painter Claude Monet born (1840); "Moby Dick" is first published (1851); Albert Einstein first presents quantum theory of light (1908); RIP Booker T. Washington (1915); HBD Condoleezza Rice (1954).

Madeleine L'Engle Camp

 (/ˈlɛŋɡəl/; November 29, 1918 – September 6, 2007)[1] was an American writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and young adult fiction, including A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. Her works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in science.

Madeleine L'Engle Camp was born in New York City on November 29, 1918, and named after her great-grandmother, Madeleine Margaret L'Engle,[2] otherwise known as Mado.[3] Her maternal grandfather was Florida banker Bion Barnett, co-founder of Barnett Bank in Jacksonville, Florida. Her mother, a pianist, was also named Madeleine: Madeleine Hall Barnett. Her father, Charles Wadsworth Camp, was a writer, critic, and foreign correspondent who, according to his daughter, suffered lung damage from mustard gas during World War I.[a]
L'Engle wrote her first story at age five and began keeping a journal at age eight.[4] These early literary attempts did not translate into academic success at the New York City private school where she was enrolled. A shy, clumsy child, she was branded as stupid by some of her teachers. Unable to please them, she retreated into her own world of books and writing. Her parents often disagreed about how to raise her, and as a result she attended a number of boarding schools and had many governesses.[5][page needed] The Camps traveled frequently. At one point, the family moved to a château near Chamonix in the French Alps, in what Madeleine described as the hope that the cleaner air would be easier on her father's lungs. Madeleine was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland. However, in 1933, L'Engle's grandmother fell ill, and they moved near Jacksonville, Florida to be close to her. L'Engle attended another boarding school, Ashley Hall, in Charleston, South Carolina. When her father died in October 1936, Madeleine arrived home too late to say goodbye.[6]

L'Engle determined to give up writing on her 40th birthday (November 1958) when she received yet another rejection notice. "With all the hours I spent writing, I was still not pulling my own weight financially." Soon she discovered both that she could not give it up and that she had continued to work on fiction subconsciously.[12]
The family returned to New York City in 1959 so that Hugh could resume his acting career. The move was immediately preceded by a ten-week cross-country camping trip, during which L'Engle first had the idea for her most famous novel, A Wrinkle in Time, which she completed by 1960. It was rejected more than thirty times before she handed it to John C. Farrar;[12] it was finally published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1962.[11]
In 1960 the Franklins moved to an apartment (sold by the estate for $4 million in 2008), in the Cleburne Building on West End Avenue.[13] From 1960 to 1966 (and again in 1986, 1989 and 1990), L'Engle taught at St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's School in New York. In 1965 she became a volunteer librarian at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, also in New York. She later served for many years as writer-in-residence at the Cathedral, generally spending her winters in New York and her summers at Crosswicks.[citation needed]
During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, L'Engle wrote dozens of books for children and adults. Four of the books for adults formed the Crosswicks Journals series of autobiographical memoirs. Of these, The Summer of the Great-grandmother (1974) discusses L'Engle's personal experience caring for her aged mother, and Two-Part Invention (1988) is a memoir of her marriage, completed after her husband's death from cancer on September 26, 1986.

Soon after winning the Newbery Medal for her 1962 "junior novel" A Wrinkle in Time, L'Engle discussed children's books in The New York Times Book Review.[14] The writer of a good children's book, she observed, may need to return to the "intuitive understanding of his own childhood," being childlike although not childish. She claimed, "It's often possible to make demands of a child that couldn't be made of an adult... a child will often understand scientific concepts that would baffle an adult. This is because he can understand with a leap of the imagination that is denied the grown-up who has acquired the little knowledge that is a dangerous thing." Of philosophy, etc., as well as science, "the child will come to it with an open mind, whereas many adults come closed to an open book. This is one reason so many writers turn to fantasy (which children claim as their own) when they have something important and difficult to say."[14]

Most of L'Engle's novels from A Wrinkle in Time onward are centered on a cast of recurring characters, who sometimes reappear decades older than when they were first introduced. The "Kairos" books are about the Murry and O'Keefe families, with Meg Murry and Calvin O'Keefe marrying and producing the next generation's protagonist, Polyhymnia O'Keefe. L'Engle wrote about both generations concurrently, with Polly (originally spelled Poly) first appearing in 1965, well before the second book about her parents as teenagers (A Wind in the Door, 1973). The "Chronos" books center on Vicky Austin and her siblings. Although Vicky's appearances all occur during her childhood and teenage years, her sister Suzy also appears as an adult in A Severed Wasp, with a husband and teenage children. In addition, two of L'Engle's early protagonists, Katherine Forrester and Camilla Dickinson, reappear as elderly women in later novels. Rounding out the cast are several characters "who cross and connect": Canon Tallis, Adam Eddington, and Zachary Gray, who each appear in both the Kairos and Chronos books.[36]

Wikipedia

Whoopi Goldberg

Caryn Elaine Johnson (born November 13, 1955),^[1][2][3] known professionally as Whoopi Goldberg (/ˈwʊpi/), is an American actress,^[4] comedian, author, and television personality. She has been nominated for 13 Emmy Awards and is one of the few entertainers to have won an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Tony Award (EGOT). She is also the second black woman to win an Academy Award for acting.

Goldberg's breakthrough came in 1985 for her role as Celie, a mistreated woman in the Deep South, in Steven Spielberg's period drama film The Color Purple, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won her first Golden Globe Award. For her performance in the romantic fantasy film Ghost (1990) as Oda Mae Brown, an eccentric psychic, Goldberg won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and a second Golden Globe, her first for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1992, Goldberg starred in the comedy Sister Act, earning a third Golden Globe nomination, her first for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. She reprised the role in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993), making her the highest-paid actress at the time. Her other film roles include Made in America (1993), Corrina, Corrina (1994), The Lion King (1994), The Little Rascals (1994), Boys on the Side (1995), Theodore Rex (1995), Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998), Girl, Interrupted (1999), For Colored Girls (2010), Toy Story 3 (2010), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), Nobody's Fool (2018) and Furlough (2018). In television, Goldberg is known for her role as Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation. She has been the moderator of the talk show The View since 2007.

November 13

Walt Disney’s groundbreaking animated film "Fantasia" premieres (1940); HBD Whoopi Goldberg (1955); Montgomery bus boycott ends when US Supreme Court rules Alabama bus segregation illegal (1956); First up-close photo of Saturn sent back from spacecraft Voyager I (1980).

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

 (November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American suffragist, social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early women's rights movement. Her Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the Seneca Falls Convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, is often credited with initiating the first organized women's rights and women's suffrage movements in the United States.^[1][2] Stanton was president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1890 until 1892.

Before Stanton narrowed her political focus almost exclusively to women's rights, she was an active abolitionist with her husband Henry Brewster Stanton (co-founder of the Republican Party) and cousin Gerrit Smith. Unlike many of those involved in the women's rights movement, Stanton addressed various issues pertaining to women beyond voting rights. Her concerns included women's parental and custody rights, property rights, employment and income rights, divorce, the economic health of the family, and birth control.^[3] She was also an outspoken supporter of the 19th-century temperance movement.

After the American Civil War, Stanton's commitment to female suffrage caused a schism in the women's rights movement when she, together with Susan B. Anthony, declined to support passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. She opposed giving added legal protection and voting rights to African American men while women, black and white, were denied those same rights. Her position on this issue, together with her thoughts on organized Christianity and women's issues beyond voting rights, led to the formation of two separate women's rights organizations that were finally rejoined, with Stanton as president of the joint organization, about twenty years after her break from the original women's suffrage movement.

Stanton died in 1902, having written both The Woman's Bible and her autobiography Eighty Years and More, and many other articles and pamphlets about female suffrage and women's rights.

Wikipedia

November 12

American suffragist and civil rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton born (1815); Joseph Stalin gains undisputed control of Soviet Union (1927); Actress and Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly born (1929); Proposal for the World Wide Web published (1990); RIP comic book writer Stan Lee (2018).

C. JoyBell C.

C. JoyBell C. is an author of poetry and literature books delving mainly into philosophy of mind, esoterism.

November 8

Astronomer Edmond Halley born (1656); X-rays are discovered (1895); Singer Minnie Riperton born (1947); HBD chef Gordon Ramsay (1966); Edward Brooke becomes first African American elected to US Senate since Reconstruction (1966).

November 7

Nobel Prize-winning physicist and chemist Marie Curie born (1867); Jeannette Rankin becomes first woman elected to US congress (1916); Evangelist Billy Graham born (1918); RIP Eleanor Roosevelt (1962); Magic Johnson announces his HIV-positive diagnosis (1991).

November 6

Basketball inventor Dr. James Naismith born (1861); Teddy Roosevelt travels to Panama and becomes first president to make diplomatic tour outside US (1906); Bolshevik Revolution begins in Russia (1917); UN formally condemns apartheid in South Africa (1962); RIP Hollywood great Gene Tierney (1991).

Will Rogers

William Penn Adair (Will Rogers) ( November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) (aged 55) An American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer and actor and one of the best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s. Known as Oklahoma’s favorite son.

November 5

"Gone with the Wind" actress Vivien Leigh born (1913); Franklin D. Roosevelt is first and only US president elected to third term (1940); Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death (2006); HBD Google Android operating system from Google (2007).

November 4

Journalist Walter Cronkite born (1916); Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes first woman elected governor in the US (1924); HBD Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs (1969); Iran hostage crisis begins (1979); Barack Obama becomes first African American elected US president (2008).

October 31

English poet John Keats born (1795); RIP Harry Houdini (1926); Mount Rushmore National Memorial is completed (1941); Actor and comedian John Candy born (1950); First female Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi is assassinated (1984).

November 1

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling exhibited to public for first time (1512); Earthquake and tsunami in Lisbon kills 60-90K (1755); Silent film star Laura LaPlante born (1904); HBD Apple CEO Tim Cook (1960); RIP football great Walter Payton (1999).