The James Logan Courier

From wikipedia:
George Catlett Marshall, Jr. (December 31, 1880 – October 16, 1959) was an American military leader, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense. Once noted as the "organizer of victory" by Winston Churchill for his leadership of the Allied victory in World War II . Marshall supervised the U.S. Army during the war and was the chief military adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As Secretary of State he gave his name to the Marshall Plan, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.

George C. Marshall was born into a middle-class family in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Marshall was a scion of an old Virginia family, as well as a distant relative of former Chief Justice John Marshall. Marshall graduated from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI),[3] where he was initiated into the Kappa Alpha Order, in 1901.

Read George Marshall's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, free from NobelPrize.org.

From wikipedia:Bert Parks (December 30, 1914 – February 2, 1992), an American actor, singer, and radio and television announcer and host, is best known as the longtime host (1955-1979) of the annual Miss America Pageant telecast.

Born Bert Jacobson in Atlanta, Georgia, Parks got his first broadcasting job at age sixteen, for Atlanta's WGST radio. He moved to New York when he was nineteen. He was hired as a singer and straight man on The Eddie Cantor Show before becoming a CBS radio staff announcer. Parks became the host of Break the Bank, which premiered on radio in 1945 and went on to television from 1948-1957, and http://www.jameslogancourier.org/nucleus/images/button-italic.gifStop the Music on radio in 1948, and on television 1949-1952.

Read more about Bert Parks and the Miss America pageant, free from pbs.org.

Charles Goodyear (December 29, 1800 - July 1, 1860) was the first American to vulcanize rubber, a process which he discovered in 1839 and patented on June 15, 1844. Although Goodyear is often credited with its invention, modern evidence has proven that the Mesoamericans used stabilized rubber for balls and other objects as early as 1600 BC.[1]

Goodyear discovered the vulcanization process accidentally after five years of research. Joseph Holt later described Goodyear as having showed "almost superhuman perseverance" in his search for a more stable rubber[2]

Charles Goodyear was born in New Haven, Connecticut on December 29, 1800. He was the son of Amasa Goodyear, and the oldest of six children. His father was quite proud of being a descendant of Stephen Goodyear, one of the founders of the colony of New Haven in 1638 .

Learn more about Charles Goodyear and his work with rubber, free from bouncing-balls.com.

From wikipedia:
Nichelle Nichols (born Grace Nichols on December 28, 1932) is an American singer, actress, and voice actress. She sang with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton before turning to acting. Her most famous role may be that of communications officer Lieutenant Uhura aboard the USS Enterprise in the popular Star Trek television series, as well as the succeeding motion picture spinoffs, where her character was eventually promoted in Starfleet to the rank of commander. In 2006, she added executive producer to her resume.

Nichols was born in Robbins, Illinois, near Chicago, to Lishia Parks and Samuel Earl Nichols, a factory worker who was both the town mayor of Robbins and its chief magistrate. She studied in Chicago as well as New York and Los Angeles. During her time in New York, Nichols appeared at the famous "Blue Angel" and Playboy Clubs, as a singer. She also appeared in the role of Carmen for a Chicago stock company production of Carmen Jones. Between acting and singing engagements, Nichols did occasional modeling work. She posed in a 1960 catalog for Hollywood fetish clothing seller Fine Craft, Inc. She also did a provocative layout in the December 1960 issue of the men's magazine Escapade. And in January 1967 she was featured on the cover of Ebony magazine.

Visit Nichelle Nichol's official website, uhura.com.

From wikipedia:
Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet (December 27, 1773 – December 15, 1857)"Father of Aerodynamics" was a prolific English engineer from Brompton-by-Sawdon, near Scarborough in Yorkshire. He was a pioneer of aeronautical engineering, though he worked over a century before the development of powered flight. He served for the Whig party as Member of Parliament for Scarborough from 1832 to 1835, and helped found the Royal Polytechnic Institution (now University of Westminster), serving as its chairman for many years. He was a founding member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and was a distant cousin of the mathematician Arthur Cayley.

Learn more about Sir George Cayley's early glider designs, free from flyingmachines.org.

From wikipedia:
Evangeline Cory Booth (December 25, 1865 – July 17, 1950) was the 4th General of The Salvation Army (1934-1939).

She was born in South Hackney, London, England, the seventh of eight children born to William Booth and Catherine Mumford, who had earlier in the year founded The Christian Mission, which became The Salvation Army in 1878.

In 1887, at 21 years of age, she became the officer of the corps in Marylebone. She was appointed as Field Commissioner throughout Great Britain in 1888. She served that post until 1891, when her father appointed her to train cadets in London.

Read The War Romance of the Salvation Army by Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill, free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:
George Crabbe (December 24, 1754 - February 3, 1832) was an English poet and naturalist.

He was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the son of a tax collector, and developed his love of poetry as a child. In 1768 he was apprenticed to a local doctor, who taught him little, and in 1771 he changed masters and moved to Woodbridge. There he met his future wife, Sarah Elmy, who accepted his proposal and had the faith and patience not only to wait for Crabbe but to encourage his verse writing. His first major work, a poem entitled "Inebriety", was self-published in 1775. By this time he had completed his medical training, and had decided to take up writing seriously. In 1780, he went to London, where he had little success, but eventually made an impression on Edmund Burke, who helped him have his poem, The Library, published in 1781. In the meantime, Crabbe's religious nature had made itself felt, and he was ordained a clergyman and became chaplain to the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire.

Read George Crabbe's book of poetry, The Library, one of seven of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:
Otto Soglow (December 23, 1900-April 3, 1975) was an American cartoonist best known for his comic strip The Little King.

Born in Yorkville, Manhattan, Soglow studied with John Sloan at the Art Students League of New York. He published his first cartoon in 1919 and throughout the 1920s he published them in numerous magazines. Most notably he was a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, where his character The Little King first appeared in 1931.

Read more about Otto Soglow and his comic strip, The Little King, free from Toonopedia.com.

From wikipedia:
Frank Billings Kellogg (December 22, 1856 – December 21, 1937) was an American lawyer, politician and statesman who served in the U.S. Senate and as U.S. Secretary of State. He co-authored the Kellogg-Briand Pact, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929.

He was born in Potsdam, New York, and his family moved to Minnesota in 1865. He began practicing law in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1877. He was city attorney of Rochester 1878 – 1881 and county attorney for Olmsted County, Minnesota, from 1882 – 1887. He moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1887.


Read Frank B. Kellogg's Acceptance Speech on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, December 10, 1929, free from NobelPrize.org.

From wikipedia:
Cicely (changed to Cicily) Isabel Fairfield (December 21, 1892–March 15, 1983), better known by her pen name Dame Rebecca West, DBE, was a British-Irish suffragist and writer famous for her novels, literary criticism, travel literature and for her relationship with H. G. Wells. A prolific, protean author, she wrote for The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Sunday Telegraph, and The New York Herald Tribune. She also was an important correspondent for The Bookman.

Read The Return of the Soldier, by Rebecca West, free from Google Books.

From wikipedia:
Moss Hart (1904 – December 20, 1961) was an American playwright and director of plays and musical theater. Hart recalled his youth, early career and rise to fame in his autobiography, Act One, adapted to film in 1963, with George Hamilton portraying Hart.

Hart grew up at 74 East 105th Street in Manhattan, “a neighborhood not of carriages and hansom cabs, but of dray wagons, pushcarts, and immigrants” (Bach 1). Early on he had a strong relationship with his Aunt Kate, whom he later lost contact with because of a falling out between her and his parents, and her weakening mental state. She got him interested in the theater and took him to see performances often. Hart even went so far as to create an "alternate ending" to her life in his book Act One. He writes that she died while he was working on out-of-town tryouts for The Beloved Bandit. Later, Kate became quite eccentric, vandalizing Hart's home, writing threatening letters and setting fires backstage during rehearsals for Jubilee. But his relationship with Kate was life-forming. He understood that the theater made possible "the art of being somebody else… not a scrawny boy with bad teeth, a funny name… and a mother who was a distant drudge." (Bach 13).

Read more about Moss Hart and the stamp in his honor, free from the U.S. Postal Service.

From wikipedia:
Bernice Pauahi Bishop (December 19, 1831 – October 16, 1884) was a Hawaiian woman, a direct descendant of the royal House of Kamehameha, aliʻi, and philanthropist. She was the great-granddaughter of King Kamehameha I and the last surviving descendant of his royal line. Her estate is the largest private landowner in the state of Hawaiʻi. The revenues from these lands are used to operate the Kamehameha Schools, which were established in 1887 according to her last will and testament.

Born in Honolulu to Aliʻi Paki and princess Aliʻi Konia, Pauahi was raised by kuhina nui (prime minister) Kīnaʻu and was later educated by Protestant missionaries.

Read The Memoirs of Hon. Bernice Pauahi Bishop
By Mary Hannah Krout, free from Google Books.

From wikipedia:
Sir Joseph John “J.J.” Thomson, OM, FRS (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was a British physicist and Nobel laureate, credited for the discovery of the electron and of isotopes, and the invention of the mass spectrometer. He was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the electron.

J.J. Thomson was born in 1856 in Cheetham Hill, Manchester in England, of Scottish parentage. In 1870 he studied engineering at University of Manchester known as Owens College at that time, and moved on to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1876. In 1880, he obtained his BA in mathematics (Second Wrangler and 2nd Smith's prize) and MA (with Adams Prize) in 1883. In 1884 he became Cavendish Professor of Physics. One of his students was Ernest Rutherford, who would later succeed him in the post. He rejected his suitor Rachel Love which left her heartbroken, but in 1890 he married Rose Elisabeth Paget, daughter of Sir George Edward Paget, KCB, a physician and then Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge. He fathered one son, George Paget Thomson, and one daughter, Joan Paget Thomson, with her. His son became a noted physicist in his own right, winning the Nobel Prize himself for proving the wavelike properties of electrons.

Read J.J. Thompson's Nobel Prize lecture, free from Nobelprize.org.

From wikipedia:
John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892) was an American Quaker poet and forceful advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States.

He was born to John and Abigail (Hussey) at the rural homestead in Haverhill, Massachusetts on December 17, 1807. He grew up on the farm in a household with his parents, a brother and two sisters, a maternal aunt and paternal uncle, and a constant flow of visitors and hired hands for the farm. During the winter term, he attended the district school, and was first introduced to poetry by a teacher.

Read Yankee Gypsies by John Greenleaf Whittier, one of 45 of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:
Elizabeth Carter, (December 16, 1717 – February 19, 1806), was a poet, classicist and translator, and member of the Bluestocking Circle. Born in Deal, Kent, daughter of a clergyman. Encouraged by her father to study, she applied herself with such perseverance that she became perhaps one of the most learned Englishwoman of her time, being mistress of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, besides several modern European languages.

Read more about Elizabeth Carter in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, free from Bartleby.com.

From wikipedia:
James Maxwell Anderson (15 December 1888 – 28 February 1959), better known as Maxwell Anderson was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, author, poet, reporter and lyricist, and a founding member of The Playwrights' Company (which included, at various times, Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, Elmer Rice, Robert E. Sherwood, Sidney Howard, Roger L. Stevens, John F. Wharton, and Kurt Weill, and produced many notable plays of the 20th century).

He was born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second child of William Lincoln Anderson, a Baptist minister, and his wife, formerly Charlotte Perrimela Stephenson. His family initially lived on his maternal grandmother's farm in Atlantic, then moved to Andover, Ohio, where his father became a railroad fireman while studying to become a minister. They moved to Jamestown, North Dakota in 1907, where Anderson attended Jamestown High School, graduating in 1908.

Watch the Lewis Milestone's 1932 film, Rain, screenplay by Maxwell Anderson, free from the Internet Archive.

From wikipedia:

Anne (nee: Finch) Conway, Viscountess Conway (14 December 1631–1679) was an English philosopher whose work, in the tradition of the Cambridge Platonists, was an influence on Leibniz.

She was born to Frances (daughter of Sir Edmund Bell of Beaupre Hall in Norfolk) and Sir Heneage Finch (who had held the posts of the Recorder of London and Speaker of the House of Commons under Charles I). Her father died the week before her birth. Her early education was by tutors and included Latin, to which she later added Greek and Hebrew. Her stepbrother, John Finch, was educated at Cambridge, and Anne Finch (as she then was) came into contact with one of his tutors, the Platonist Henry More. This led to a correspondence between them on the subject of Descartes' philosophy, in the course of which Anne grew from More's informal pupil to his intellectual equal. More said of her that he had "scarce ever met with any Person, Man or Woman, of better Natural parts than Lady Conway" (quoted in Richard Ward's The Life of Henry More (1710) p.193).

Read Anne Conway’s Critique of Cartesian Dualism, by Louise D. Derksen, free from Boston University.

From wikipedia:
Emily Carr (December 13, 1871 – March 2, 1945) was a Canadian artist and writer.

She was born in Victoria, British Columbia, and moved to San Francisco in 1890 to study art after the death of her parents. In 1899 she travelled to England to deepen her studies, where she spent time at the Westminster School of Art in London and at various studio schools in Cornwall, Bushey, Hertfordshire, San Francisco, and elsewhere. In 1910 , she spent a year studying art at the Académie Colarossi in Paris and elsewhere in France before moving back to British Columbia permanently the following year.

Read Klee Wyck by Emily Carr, free from Project Gutenberg Australia.

From wikipedia:
Harriet Monroe (12 December 1860 – 26 September 1936) was an American editor, scholar, literary critic, and patron of the arts. She is best known as the founder and long time editor of Poetry magazine. Harriet was born in Chicago, Illinois and passed away in Arequipa, Peru.

Read The New Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson free from Bartleby.com.

From wikipedia:
Annie Jump Cannon (December 11, 1863 – April 13, 1941) was an American astronomer whose cataloguing work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, which was the first serious attempt to organize and classify stars based on their temperatures.

Family
The daughter of shipbuilder and state senator Wilson Lee Cannon and his second wife, Mary Elizabeth Jump, Annie grew up in Dover, Delaware. Mary gave birth to two more daughters after Annie, in addition to the four step-children she inherited in the marriage. Annie's mother had a childhood interest in star-gazing, and she passed that interest along to her daughter.

Read more about Annie Jump Cannon and her work, free from Wellesley University.

From wikipedia:
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (December 10, 1815 – November 27, 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron, is mainly known for having written a description of Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine.

Ada was the first legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron and his wife, Anne Isabella Milbanke. She was named after Byron's half-sister, Augusta Leigh, whose child he was rumored to have fathered. It was Augusta who encouraged Byron to marry to avoid scandal, and he reluctantly chose Annabella. Ada was born on December 10, 1815, London, England. On January 16, 1816, Anne Isabella left Byron, taking 1-month old Ada with her. On April 21, Byron signed the Deed of Separation and left England for good a few days later.

Read A Selection and Adaptation From Ada's Notes found in "Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers," by Betty Alexandra Toole Ed.D., one of the Biographies of Women Mathematicians, available free from agnesscott.edu.

From wikipedia:
Eli Whitney (December 8, 1765 – January 8, 1825) was an American inventor.

Whitney was born in Westborough, Massachusetts, on December 8, 1765, the eldest child of Eli Whitney, a prosperous farmer, and Elizabeth Fay of Westborough. Very early in life he demonstrated his mechanical genius and entrepreneurial acumen, operating a profitable nail manufacturing operation in his father's workshop during the American Revolution. Because his step-mother opposed his wish to attend college, Whitney worked as a farm laborer and schoolteacher to save money. He prepared for Yale under the tutelage of Rev. Elizur Goodrich of Durham, Connecticut and entered the Class of 1792.

Visit the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop, free online at eliwhitney.org.

Leopold Kronecker (December 7, 1823 – December 29, 1891) was a German mathematician and logician who argued that arithmetic and analysis must be founded on "whole numbers", saying, "God made the integers; all else is the work of man" (Bell 1986, p. 477). This put Kronecker in bitter opposition to some of the mathematical extensions of Georg Cantor, Kronecker's student (cf. Davis (2000), pp. 59ff). Kronecker was a student and lifelong friend of Ernst Kummer.

Learn about the Kronecker Symbol, an extension of the Jacobi symbol, to all integers. free from Wolfram Mathworld.

From wikipedia:
James Elphinston (December 6, 1721 – October 8, 1809) was a well noted 18th Century Scottish educator, orthographer, phonologist and linguistics expert.

He was the author of Propriety Ascertained in Her Picture, (or English Speech and Spelling Rendered Mutual Guides, Secure Alike from Distant, and from Domestic, Error)(1786, 1787)[2 volumes], The Principles of the English Language Digested for the use of Schools (1766), Inglish Orthoggraphy Epittomized (1790), Miniature of English Orthography (1795), and was the co-author of The Epigrams of Marcus Valerius Martialis in twelve books: with commentary and translation into English by James Elphinston (1782) and other titles.

Read James Elphinston's A Minniature ov Inglish Orthoggraphy, free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:
Samuel Butler (4 December 1612 – 18 June 1680) was born in Strensham, Worcestershire and baptised 14 February 1613. He is remembered now chiefly for a long satirical burlesque poem on Puritanism entitled Hudibras.

He was the son of a farmer and was educated at the King's School, Worcester, under Henry Bright whose teaching is recorded favourably by Thomas Fuller a contemporary writer in his Worthies of England. In early youth he was page to the Countess of Kent, and thereafter clerk to various Puritan justices, some of whom are believed to have suggested characters in Hudibras. Through Lady Kent he met John Selden who influenced his later writings. He also tried his hand at painting but was reportedly not very good at it; one of his editors reporting that "his pictures served to stop windows and save the tax" (on window glass).

Read The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel Butler, one of 12 of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:
Judge William Cooper (December 2, 1754 – December 22, 1809) was the founder of Cooperstown, New York and father of writer James Fenimore Cooper, who apparently used his father as the pattern for the Judge Marmaduke Temple character in his book The Pioneers.

Read William Cooper's How Settlements were Promoted from A Guide in the Wilderness, from 1810, free from USGenNet.