Tag: ephemerides

“Novelty” musician Mickey Katz, who specialized in Jewish parodies of American classics (such as “Haym afn Range” and “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Katzkills”), died at 75 in Los Angeles on this date in 1985. Katz...

One of the worst mining disasters in U.S. history, at a coal mine owned by the Guggenheim family in Eccles, West Virginia, was reported by the New York Times on this date in 1914. Between 183...

Barbra Streisand is an award-winning performer on stage, television, and in motion pictures, as well as a recording artist of popular music. Younger years Barbara Joan Streisand was born on April 24, 1942, in Brooklyn, New...

Sculptor Louise Nevelson (Leah Berliawsky) died at 88 on this date in 1988. Born to a Yiddish-speaking immigrant family, trained at the Arts Student League, and a WPA artist for four years until 1939,...

Margret Elizabeth and Hans Augusto Rey, the creators of Curious George, became American citizens on this date in 1946. They were German Jews who met in Brazil and married in 1935. Living and creating...

Hamas conducted a suicide-bomber attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel, during a Passover seder on this date in 2002, killing thirty civilians and injuring 140. Most of the victims were elderly, including...

Al Jaffee, whose 64-year career with MAD magazine makes him its longest-running artist, was born in Savannah, Georgia on this date in 1921. He spent six years living in Lithuania in a Yiddish-speaking environment before returning...

Ayn Rand (Alisa Rosenbaum), Russian-born author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, among other philosophical novels and screenplays, died on this date in 1982. Rand developed the philosophy of Objectivism, which advocated human reason as...

Gershom Scholem (December 5, 1897 – February 21, 1982), was a German-born Israeli philosopher and historian. He is widely regarded as the founder of the modern, academic study of Kabbalah. He was the first...

Judy Blume, who redefined the terms of acceptable discourse in children’s literature on her way to selling eighty million copies of her books and seeing them translated into thirty-one languages, was born in Elizabeth,...