Happy Burns night! Mendelsohn's "Wedding March" hits the big time, and the birthday club includes Robert Burns, of course, W. Somerset Maugham, and Virginia Woolf - with a reading of Burns' "A Red, Red Rose."

Gold is discovered in California, canned beer is sold for the first time in the U.S., and happy birthday to Edith Wharton - with a reading from Mark Twain's "Roughing It."

The first female medical doctor in the U.S., Wham-O buys the rights to a flying toy disc, the U.S. ratifies the 24th Amendment to the Constitution - and a reading from Agatha Christie's "Murder in Mesopotamia."

The U.S. Supreme Court issues its decision in "Roe v. Wade," Apple Inc. introduces the Macintosh home computer, and happy birthday to Lord Byron - with a reading from Byron's "Don Juan."

The first novel published in the U.S. is released and the birthday club includes Ito Noe and Elaine Showalter. Today's reading is from "The House of Mirth," by Edith Wharton.

Happy birthday to Huddie Ledbetter and Fareed Zakaria - with a reading from "Democracy and Social Ethics," by Jane Addams.

Goethe's play "Faust: A Tragedy" (part 1) premieres, the ACLU is founded, and happy birthday to Edgar Allan Poe - with a reading from one of Poe's letters.

Happy birthday to Alan Alexander Milne - with a reading from one of his best known works "The House at Pooh Corner."

Happy birthday to Anne Bronte - with a reading from her second novel, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall."

Miguel Cervantes publishes "Don Quixote," Virginia adopts the Statute of Religious Freedom as written by Thomas Jefferson, Ernest Shackleton reaches the magnetic South Pole, and the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords. Happy Birthday to Susan Sontag - and a reading from Cervantes' "Don Quixote."