The birthday club includes Maxim Gorky, Nelson Algren, Iris Chang, and Jennifer Weiner - with a reading from Algren's "Chicago: City on the Make."

Congress overrides a veto of civil rights legislation and the birthday club includes Jane Colden, Charles Mackay, and Jelena Dimitrijević - with a reading of Mackay's "No Enemies."

The Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty is signed and the birthday club includes Julie-Victoire Daubie, Robert Frost, Joseph Campbell, Viktor Frankl, and Tennessee Williams - with a reading from Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning."

Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from Oxford, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr speaks of the death of segregation, and the birthday club includes Flannery O'Connor and Gloria Steinem - with a reading from O'Connor's "Wise Blood."

The Quartering Act enrages American colonists, tuberculosis is identified, and the birthday club includes Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Erica Kennedy - with a reading from Gage's "Woman, Church, and State."

Patrick Henry speaks out during the Second Revolutionary convention, Archbishop Oscar Romero pleads for peace in El Salvador, and the birthday club includes Akira Kurosawa and Subhadra Joshi - with a reading from Henry's speech.

The first treaty between indigenous tribes and European Americans is signed, the top court in the US rules in favor of contraceptives and pre-marital sex, and the birthday club includes Louis L'Amour, Al Neuharth, Stephen Sondheim, George Benson, and Andrew Lloyd Webber - with a reading from George Eliot's "Middlemarch."

The state of Tennessee prohibits the teaching of human evolution, the first comic-con, the UN Framework Convention on Climate, and the birthday club includes Dorothea Beale, Son House, Forrest Mars, Senior, and Solomon Burke - with a reading from Beale's "Work and Play in Girls’ Schools."

Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is published, Albert Einstein publishes his theory of relativity, the birthday club includes Ovid, Anne Bradstreet, Carl Reiner, and Spike Lee - with a reading from Ovid's "Metamorphoses."

Minna Canth, Philip Roth, and Clara Breed were born on this day - with a reading from Breed's article "Americans with the Wrong Ancestors."