Today's Famous Birthdays

[IceWizard]

Eric Hilliard Nelson
(May 8, 1940 – December 31, 1985)

was an American musician and actor. From age eight he starred alongside his family in
the radio and television series The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. In 1957, he began
a long and successful career as a popular recording artist. The expression "teen idol"
was first coined to describe Nelson, and his fame as both a recording artist and television
star also led to a motion picture role co-starring alongside John Wayne, Dean Martin,
Walter Brennan, and Angie Dickinson in Howard Hawks's western feature film Rio Bravo (1959).
He placed 54 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 and its predecessors between 1957 and 1973,
including "Poor Little Fool" in 1958, which was the first number one song on Billboard
magazine's then-newly created Hot 100 chart. He recorded 19 additional top ten hits and
was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on January 21, 1987. In 1996 Nelson
was ranked No. 49 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time. Nelson was born on
May 8, 1940, in Teaneck, New Jersey. He was the second son of entertainment
couple Harriet Hilliard Nelson (born Peggy Lou Snyder; July 18, 1909 – October 2, 1994)
and Ozzie Nelson (March 20, 1906 – June 3, 1975). His father Ozzie was of half Swedish
descent. The Nelsons' older son was actor David Nelson
(October 24, 1936 – January 11, 2011).











Harry S. Truman
(May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States,
serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as
the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin Roosevelt and as a
United States senator from Missouri from 1935 to January 1945. Assuming the presidency
after Roosevelt's death, Truman implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild the economy
of Western Europe and established both the Truman Doctrine and NATO to contain the
expansion of Soviet communism. He proposed numerous liberal domestic reforms,
but few were enacted by the conservative coalition that dominated the Congress.
Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, on May 8, 1884, the oldest child of
John Anderson Truman and Martha Ellen Young Truman.











Stephen Furst
(born Stephen Nelson Feuerstein; May 8, 1954 – June 16, 2017)

was an American actor. After gaining attention with his featured role as Kent "Flounder" Dorfman
in the comedy film National Lampoon's Animal House and its spin-off television series
Delta House, he went on to be a regular as Dr. Elliot Axelrod in the medical drama series
St. Elsewhere from 1983 to 1988, and as Centauri diplomatic attaché Vir Cotto in the
science fiction series Babylon 5 from 1994 to 1998. Other notable film roles included the
college comedy Midnight Madness (1980), as a team leader in an all-night mystery game,
the action thriller Silent Rage (1982), as deputy to a sheriff played by Chuck Norris, and
the comedy The Dream Team (1989), as a good-natured psychiatric patient.