Today's Famous Birthdays

[IceWizard]

Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei
(15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642)

was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath.
Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (GAL-ih-LAY-oh GAL-ih-LAY-ee,
Italian: [ɡaliˈlɛːo ɡaliˈlɛi]). He was born in the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence.
Galileo has been called the "father" of observational astronomy, modern physics,
the scientific method, and modern science.










Cyrus Hall McCormick
(February 15, 1809 – May 13, 1884)

was an American inventor and businessman who founded the McCormick Harvesting Machine
Company, which later became part of the International Harvester Company in 1902.
Originally from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, he and many members of the McCormick
family became prominent residents of Chicago. McCormick has been simplistically credited as
the single inventor of the mechanical reaper. He was, however, one of several designing
engineers who produced successful models in the 1830s. His efforts built on more than two
decades of work by his father Robert McCormick Jr., with the aid of Jo Anderson, who was
enslaved by the family. He also successfully developed a modern company, with manufacturing,
marketing, and a sales force to market his products.









Charles Lewis Tiffany
(February 15, 1812 – February 18, 1902)

was an American businessman and jeweler who founded New York City's Tiffany & Co. in 1837.
Known for his jewelry expertise, Tiffany created the country's first retail catalog and introduced
the English standard of sterling silver in imported jewelry in 1851.









Susan B. Anthony
(born Susan Anthony; February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906)

was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the
women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she
collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state
agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.









Emil Wilhelm Georg Magnus Kraepelin
(15 February 1856 – 7 October 1926)
was a German psychiatrist.
H. J. Eysenck's Encyclopedia of Psychology identifies him as the founder of modern scientific
psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics.

Kraepelin believed the chief origin of psychiatric disease to be biological and genetic malfunction.
His theories dominated psychiatry at the start of the 20th century and, despite the later
psychodynamic influence of Sigmund Freud and his disciples, enjoyed a revival at century's end.
While he proclaimed his own high clinical standards of gathering information "by means of expert
analysis of individual cases", he also drew on reported observations of officials not trained in psychiatry.










Major Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton CVO OBE FRGS FRSGS
(15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922)

was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was
one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Born in Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland, Shackleton and his Anglo-Irish family[1] moved to Sydenham
in suburban south London when he was ten. Shackleton's first experience of the polar regions was as
third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery expedition of 1901–1904, from which he was
sent home early on health grounds, after he and his companions Scott and Edward Adrian Wilson set
a new southern record by marching to latitude 82°S. During the Nimrod expedition of 1907–1909,
he and three companions established a new record Farthest South latitude at 88°S, only 97 geographical
miles (112 statute miles or 180 kilometres) from the South Pole, the largest advance to the pole in
exploration history. Also, members of his team climbed Mount Erebus, the most active Antarctic volcano.
For these achievements, Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII on his return home.









Yelena Bonner
(15 February 1923-18 June 2011)

(now Mary, Turkmenistan). Her father, Georgy Alikhanov (Armenian name Gevork Alikhanyan), 
was an Armenian who founded the Soviet Armenian Communist Party, and was a highly placed
member of the Comintern; her mother, Ruf (Ruth Bonner), was a Jewish Communist activist.
She had a younger brother, Igor, who became a career naval officer. Her family had a summer
dacha in Sestroretsk and Bonner had fond memories there.

In 1937, Bonner's father was arrested by the NKVD and executed as part of Stalin's Great Purge;
her mother was arrested a few days later as the wife of an enemy of the people, and served ten
years in the Gulag near Karaganda, Kazakhstan, followed by nine years of internal exile. Bonner's
41-year-old maternal uncle, Matvei Bonner, was also executed during the purge, and his wife
internally exiled. All four were exonerated (rehabilitated) following Stalin's death in 1953. In 1941
she volunteered for the Red Army's Hospital when the Soviet Union was invaded, and she became
head nurse. While serving during World War II, Bonner was wounded twice, and in 1946 was
honorably discharged as a disabled veteran. In 1947 Bonner was accepted as student in the
medical institute in Leningrad.[10] After the war she earned a degree in pediatrics from the
First Leningrad Medical Institute, presently First Pavlov State Medical University of St. Peterburg.