August 4

Have you every felt that a day has unexpectedly gotten far too busy for you to feel comfortable with it? It seems clear to me that August 4 is one of those days. Andrew Hamilton, journalist John Peter Zenger’s pro bono attorney, died in 1741. John Burgoyne, commander-in-chief of the British Forces during the American Revolutionary War, died in 1792. William Floyd, a signatory of the American Declaration of Independence, died in 1821. Writer Hans Christian Anderson died in 1875. Lizzie Borden’s stepmother, Abby Durfee Borden died in 1892. John Wesley Clark, who was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for his service during the Civil War, died in 1893. William Lord, who had served as a musician in the Union Army during the Civil War and won a congressional medal of honor for his service, died in 1915; Daniel Hale Williams (pictured), a black surgeon who is generally credited with performing the second open-heart surgery, died in 1931. Pearl Fay White, best known as the star of the silent movie The Perils of Pauline, died in 1938. Victoria Cross recipient Ian Willoughby Bazalgette died in 1944. Sam Katzman, a movie producer who signed Bela Lugosi for a series of low-budget horror films, died in 1973; Frankie Fontaine, who played ‘Crazy Guggenheim’ on the Jackie Gleason Show, died in 1978. Actor Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg, better known as Melvyn Douglas, who won two Oscars, one Emmy and one Tony, died in 1981. Actor Victor Mature died in 1999. Dean Perchik, much to his doctors’ surprise, in 2007 did not.