MILESTONES: October 18, birthdays for Zac Efron, Lindsey Vonn, Tyler Posey

October 18, 2018 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Zac Efron. Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

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NOTABLE PEOPLE born on this day include actress PAM DAWBER, who was born in 1951; sportscaster, Hall of Fame football player and former football coach MIKE DITKA, who was born in 1939; actor ZAC EFRON, who was born in 1987; jazz musician WYNTON MARSALIS, who was born in 1961; author TERRY McMILLAN, who was born in 1951; actor JOE MORTON, who was born in Harlem in 1947; Hall of Fame tennis player MARTINA NAVRATILOVA, who was born in 1956; singer, songwriter, actor and producer NE-YO, who was born in 1979; actress FREIDA PINTO, who was born in 1984; dramatist and poet NTOZAKE SHANGE, who was born in 1948; actor VINCENT SPANO, who was born in Brooklyn in 1962; actor JEAN-CLAUDE VAN DAMME, who was born in 1960; and Olympic gold medal-winning skier LINDSEY VONN, who was born in 1984.

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THOMAS EDISON DIED ON THIS DAY IN 1931. The great American inventor died at his home in Glenmount, N.J. On the evening of his funeral, many corporations dimmed their electric lights in respect.

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“ROSEANNE” PREMIERED ON THIS DAY IN 1988. The comedy showed the blue-collar Conner family trying to make ends meet. Rosanne Barr played wisecracking Roseanne Conner, John Goodman player her husband Dan, and Laurie Metcalf played her sister Jackie. The Conner children were played by Sara Gilbert (Darlene), Alicia Goranson and Sarah Chalke (Becky) and Michael Fishman (D.J.). The last episode aired Nov. 14, 1997.

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THE FIRST NEWSPAPER COMIC STRIP RAN ON THIS DAY IN 1896. Although cartoons had appeared in newspapers for many years, the comic strip — a narrative told in cartoons over several panels — took its main form with the appearance of “The Yellow Kid Takes a Hand at Golf” in the New York Journal‘s weekly supplement, American Humorist. The creator was Richard Fenton Outcault. In March 1897, the Yellow Kid Magazine gathered the strips and became the first published collection of a comic strip — setting the stage for the first comic books in the late 1920s.

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MELINA MERCOURI WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1920. The Greek actress and politician Melina Mercouri was born Maria Amalia Mercouri in Athens, Greece. Of her more than 70 films and plays, she is best known for her role in “Never on Sunday.” In 1977, she was elected to Greece’s Parliament and she became the first woman in Greece’s senior cabinet when appointed by Premier Andreas Papandreou to the position of minister of culture in 1981. She died in New York in 1994.

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Special thanks to “Chase’s Calendar of Events” and Brooklyn Public Library.

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“Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” — Thomas Edison, who died on this day in 1931