Richard Dean Anderson

Richard Dean Anderson (born January 23, 1950) is an American actor and producer. He began his television career in 1976, playing Dr. Jeff Webber in the American soap-opera series General Hospital, then rose to prominence as the lead actor in the television series MacGyver (1985–1992). He later appeared in films such as Through the Eyes of a Killer (1992), Pandora's Clock (1996), and Firehouse (1997).
In 1997, Anderson returned to television as the lead actor of the series Stargate SG-1, a spin-off of the 1994 film Stargate. He played the lead from 1997 to 2005 and had a recurring role from 2005 to 2007. Since 1997, he has starred in only one film: Stargate: Continuum, released in 2008, as a spin-off film after the Stargate SG-1 series finale in 2007. He appeared in the follow-up Stargate series Stargate: Atlantis and Stargate: Universe (as Major General and later Lieutenant General Jack O'Neill).

MLK

Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1954 until his assassination in 1968. Born in Atlanta, King is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, tactics his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi helped inspire.


King led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and in 1957 became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). With the SCLC, he led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. He also helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.


On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped organize the Selma to Montgomery marches. The following year, he and the SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War. He alienated many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled "Beyond Vietnam". J. Edgar Hoover considered him a radical and made him an object of the FBI's COINTELPRO from 1963 on. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, recorded his extramarital liaisons and reported on them to government officials, and on one occasion mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide.
In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities. Allegations that James Earl Ray, the man convicted and imprisoned of killing King, had been framed or acted in concert with government agents persisted for decades after the shooting. Sentenced to 99 years in prison for King's murder, effectively a life sentence as Ray was 41 at the time of conviction, Ray served 29 years of his sentence and died from hepatitis in 1998 while in prison.
King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971; the holiday was enacted at the federal level by legislation signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, and a county in Washington State was also rededicated for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (/poʊ/; born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. He is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.^[1] He was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Janis Joplin Pop Art

Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970), nicknamed 'Pearl,' was an American rock, soul, and blues singer and songwriter, and one of the most successful and widely known female rock stars of her era.^[1][2][3] After releasing three albums, she died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27. A fourth album, Pearl, was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the Billboard charts.
In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company.^[4][5][6] After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and the Festival Express train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the Billboard Hot 100, including a cover of the Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee", which reached number 1 in March 1971.^[7] Her most popular songs include her cover versions of "Piece of My Heart", "Cry Baby", "Down on Me", "Ball and Chain", and "Summertime"; and her original song "Mercedes Benz", her final recording.^[8][9]
Joplin, a mezzo-soprano^[10] highly respected for her charismatic performing ability, was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Audiences and critics alike referred to her stage presence as "electric". Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time^[11] and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 15.5 million albums sold.^[12]

Cary Grant

Cary Grant
January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986

Cary Grant was an English-American actor, known as one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men. He began a career in Hollywood in the early 1930s, and became known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanor, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing. He became an American citizen in 1942.

Happy Birthday, Mohamed Ali!

Muhammad Ali aka born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.; (January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016) was an American professional boxer, activist, and philanthropist. Nicknamed "The Greatest", he is widely regarded as one of the most significant and celebrated sports figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest boxers of all time.

Kevin Costner

Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, director, producer, and musician. His accolades include two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, one Primetime Emmy Award, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Costner began his acting career with Sizzle Beach, U.S.A. (1981). Following a few minor supporting parts, he rose to prominence with his portrayal of Eliot Ness in The Untouchables (1987). This was followed by a widely successful period in his career with starring roles in such films as; Bull Durham (1988), Field of Dreams (1989), Dances with Wolves (1990), for which he won two Academy Awards, JFK (1991), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and The Bodyguard (1992). In 1995, Costner starred in and co-produced Waterworld. The most expensive film ever made at the time, it was a major box office failure which marked a significant downturn in his career.[1][2] His second directorial feature The Postman (1997) was another disappointment which marked a massive downfall of his career as a leading man.[3] He has since starred in numerous films to rejuvenate his leading man status, including Message in a Bottle (1999), For Love of the Game (1999), Thirteen Days (2000), 3000 Miles to Graceland (2001), Dragonfly (2002), Rumor Has It (2005), The Guardian (2006), Mr. Brooks (2009), 3 Days to Kill (2014), Draft Day (2014), and Criminal (2016). All of these films however have been either critical or commercial failures, failing to reboot his status.[4] Nevertheless in recent years he has had supporting parts in critically favoured films including The Upside of Anger (2005), Man of Steel (2013), Hidden Figures (2016), and Molly's Game (2017).

On television, Costner portrayed Devil Anse Hatfield in the miniseries Hatfields & McCoys (2012), winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie. Since 2018, he stars as John Dutton on drama series Yellowstone.