Saul Bellow

The past is no good to us.  The future is full of anxiety.  Only the present is real -- the here-and-now.  Seize the day.

(From his 1956 novel, "Seize The Day."  Bellow won the Nobel Prize in Literature on this date in 1976.)

Bill Dickey (Mickey Mantle)

You guys got to see this kid we have in camp. Out of Class C ball, hits 'em both ways -- five-hundred feet both ways! You've got to see him.

Bill Dickey, a Hall of Fame catcher who spent his entire 19-year playing career with the Yankees, was a coach for the team when he saw Mickey Mantle for the first time during spring training in 1951.

Mantle had spent the 1950 season with the Class C Joplin Miners.  (In those days, Class D was the lowest minor-league classification.)  Mantle hit .383 with 26 HR and 136 RBI as the Miners dominated their competition, finishing the year with a 90-46 record.  

On Opening Day 1951, the 19-year-old Mantle was in the starting lineup for the Yankees, playing right field and batting 3rd (behind Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto and ahead of HOFers Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra). 

Mickey Mantle was born on this date in 1931.

Mantle as a Joplin Miner

Brian Eno

Send for an ambulance 

Or an accident investigator

He's breathing like a furnace

So I'll see you later, alligator

He'll set the sheets on fire

Mmm, quite a burning lover . . .

You have to make the choice between 

The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch and me

From Eno's 1974 album, Here Come the Warm Jets.

The "Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch" was A. W. Underwood, an African-American man from Paw Paw, Michigan, who supposedly had pyrokinetic abilities.

From Dr. L.C. Woodman's 1882 letter to the Michigan Medical News:

I have a singular phenomenon in the shape of a young man living here, that I have studied with much interest. . . . [H]is gift is that of generating fire through the medium of his breath, assisted by manipulations with his hands. He will take anybody's handkerchief, and hold it to his mouth, and rub it vigorously with his hands while breathing on it, and immediately it bursts into flames and burns until consumed.

Dr. Woodman claimed in the letter to have performed comprehensive testing to verify Underwood's powers.  Click here to read his entire report.  Skeptics later suggested that Underwood would hide a small piece of phosphorus in his mouth, which he would spit out into the handkerchief while pretending to blow on it.  The heat from his breath and his rubbing his hands together would ignite the phosphorus, which burns at about 85 °F.

Louis C.K.

When you get married, you go "Holy sh*t, I can't leave now." . . . Then you have a kid and you go, "Holy sh*t, I could have left!"

Louis C.K. -- his real name is Louie Szekely -- is a standup comedian who is the creator, writer, director, and star of the FX comedy, "Louie."  And yes -- he's divorced in real life as well as on his show. 

(Parental discretion advised . . .)

Merle Travis (Tennessee Ernie Ford)

Well, if you see me comin', better step aside

A lot of men didn't, and a lot of men died

One fist of iron, the other of steel

If the right one don't get you, the left one will 

You load sixteen tons and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt

From his 1946 song, "Sixteen Tons," which was a huge hit for Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955.  The song was #1 on the country music charts for 10 weeks, and #1 on the pop charts for eight weeks.  

Other musicians who recorded or performed this song included Frankie Laine, the platters, Elvis Presley, Bo Diddley, Stevie Wonder, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Eric Burdon, and crazy Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.

Travis's father was a Kentucky coal miner who used to say that he was "another day older and deeper in debt" when he came home at night.

Tennessee Ernie Ford died on this date 20 in 1991 -- exactly 36 years after his recording of "Sixteen Tons" was released.

Oscar Wilde

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

From his play, Lady Windemere's Fan (1892).  These words were quoted in the song "Message of Love," which was released by the Pretenders in the U.S. in 1981.

Wilde was one of the most quotable authors of all time -- he had an aphorism for every occasion.  

Here's another Wilde quote:  "Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event."  Which reminds me -- Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Willis Wilde was born on this date in 1854.  

Other notable people born on October 16 include lexicographer Noah Webster, David Ben-Gurion (the first Prime Minister of Israel), playwright Eugene O'Neill, Irish revolutionary Michael Collins, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha, actress Angela Lansbury, Watergate figure Charles Colson, "Blonde in the T-Bird" and infomercial star Suzanne Somers, cougar-loving Tim Robbins, basketball great Sue Bird, and my daughters.  

Virgil

Either there are Greeks in hiding, 

Concealed by the wood,

Or it’s been built as a machine 

To use against our walls . . .

Or it hides some other trick: 

Trojans, don’t trust this horse

Whatever it is, I’m afraid of Greeks

Even those bearing gifts.

From A. S. Kline's translation of Virgil's Aeneid.

The Aeneid is the national epic of Rome -- it's one part Iliad and one part Odyssey.  Its opening line -- "Arma virumque cano" ("Of arms and the man I sing") gave George Bernard Shaw the title for his 1894 play, Arms and the Man.

Virgil (which is short for Publius Vergilius Maro) was born on this date in 70 B.C. 

From the movie "Troy" (2004)