The birthday club includes George Eliot, Hoagy Carmichael, Rodney Dangerfield, and Terry Gilliam - with a reading from Eliot's "Mill on the Floss."

Ole Romer presents his calculations on the speed of light, and happy birthdays to Voltaire and Elizabeth George Speare - with a reading from Voltaire's "Candide."

The second Treaty of Paris is signed, the Nantucket whaler "The Essex" is sunk by a massive whale inspiring "Moby-Dick," the United Nations adopts The Declaration of the Rights of the Child, and the Velvet Revolution takes hold. Happy birthday to Selma Lagerlof - with a reading from her "Gösta Berling's Saga."

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg Address.

Standard Time is introduced in the U.S., violence and sexual assault made a demonstration for women's suffrage into "Black Friday" in London, South Africa ends Apartheid, and happy birthday to Howard Thurman and Margaret Atwood - with a reading from "Girl of the Limberlost," by Gene Stratton-Porter.

Richard Nixon says, "I am not a crook," and happy birthdays to Peter Cook and Rebecca Walker - with a reading from "Pollyanna," by Eleanor Porter.

Fyodor Dostoevsky is sentenced to death, and the birthday club includes Chinua Achebe and Andrea Barrett - with a reading from Elinore Pruitt Stewart's "Letters of a Woman Homesteader."

Sherman's "March to the Sea" and why we call it that - with a reading from Sam Byers' "Sherman's March to the Sea."

"Moby Dick" is published in the US, Nellie Bly begins her attempt to travel around the world in 80 days, and Ruby Bridges desegregates her elementary school in Louisiana. Happy birthday to Frederick Turner Jackson - with a reading from his "The Frontier in American History."

Walt Disney releases "Fantasia," the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Alabama's racist segregation of buses violated the Constitution, and Seymour Hersh publishes the story of the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. Happy birthday to Robert Louis Stevenson - with a reading from his book "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde."