Los Angeles is founded, Kodak is registered as a trademark, and Evelyn Waugh publishes "A Handful of Dust." The birthday club includes Richard Wright and Beyonce - with a reading from "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," by Kate Douglas Wiggin.

The British Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell dies, the Treaty of Paris ends the American Revolutionary War, and Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery. The UN institutes the international treaty called The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the U.S. and China formally ratifies the Paris global climate agreement - with a reading from Frederick Douglass's "My Escape from Slavery."

For the first time, Theodore Roosevelt says "Walk softly and carry a big stick," the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, and the birthday club includes Eugene Field and Billy Preston - with a reading from Roosevelt's essay "Lincoln and Free Speech."

The first female switchboard operator begins working, and the birthday club includes Johann Pachelbel, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Harriet Shaw Weaver, Liz Carpenter, and Lily Tomlin - with a reading from "The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood," by Elspeth Huxley.

Union forces attack Atlanta, Ferdinand von Zeppelin patents his "navigable balloon," Russian and the UK carve up Persia, the U.S. asserts its neutrality, and German soldiers - dressed in Polish uniforms - attack a small town in Germany as a pretense to justify invading Poland and starting the Second World War. The birthday club includes Roger Dean, Van Morrison, and Itzhak Perlman - with a reading from Willa Cather's "Song of the Lark."

Ernest Shackleton rescues every crew member who served on his doomed expedition on the Endurance. The birthday club includes Mary Shelley, Virginia Lee Burton, Kitty Wells, Molly Ivins, and Anna Politkovskaya - with a reading from Boris Pasternak's "Dr. Zhivago."

The Beatles play their last (paid) concert and the birthday club includes John Locke, Charlie Parker, and Temple Grandin - with a reading from Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding."

The oldest magazine continuously published in the U.S. puts out its first issue, and Pepsi-Cola is named. The infamous anniversary of the murder of Emmet Till and the anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Today's reading is from the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech from that March.

Canada's Famous Five begin the march to equal rights and the Kellog-Briand Pact - which prohibited starting a war - is signed. The birthday club includes Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the writer known as C. S. Forester, and Alice Coltrane - with a reading from "The Great Gatsby," by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The French National Assembly approves "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen," John Fitch gets the U.S. patent for the steamboat, and Quebec legislates French is the official language of the Canadian Province. The birthday club includes Zona Gale, Caroline Pafford Miller, and Ben Bradlee - with a reading from "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle.