The birthday club includes the Apple iPhone, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Krantz, and Joan Baez - with a reading from Beauvoir's "The Second Sex."

The first U.S. State of the Union and the birthday club includes Gypsy Rose Lee and Graham Chapman - with a reading from Willa Cather's "O Pioneers."

Marian Anderson becomes the first person of color to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and the birthday club includes Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson and Zora Neale Hurston - with a reading from Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God."

The birthday club includes Charles Sumner, Alan Watts, E. L. Doctorow, and Elizabeth Strout - with a reading from Watts on writing.

Ford switches to an 8-hour workday, Samuel Becket's "Waiting for Godot" premiers, and the birthday club includes Stella Gibbons, Umberto Eco, and Hayao Miyazaki - with a reading from Gibbons' "Cold Comfort Farm."

Solomon Northup regains his freedom and it is the birthday of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin - with a reading from Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities."

The birthday club includes J. R. R. Tolkien, Anne Stevenson, and Stephen Stills - with a reading from Agatha Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd."

The Palmer Raids sweep up thousands of foreign-born U.S. citizens and it is the birthday of Robert Marshall - with a reading from the 1964 Wilderness Act.

The U.S. bans importation of enslaved people and - nearly 60 years later - enacts the Emancipation Proclamation. The birthday club includes Maria Edgeworth, E. M. Forster, and J. D. Salinger - with a reading from Edgeworth's "Castle Rackrent."

Thomas Edison unveils his incandescent light and the birthday club includes Simon Wiesenthal and John Denver - with a reading from "The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child," by Robert Ingersoll.