Today's Birthdays

Fritz Reiner (1885-1963)
Erwin Nyíregyházi (1903-1987)
Boris Blacher (1903-1975)
Edith Piaf (1915-1963)
Dalton Baldwin (1931)
Elliott Schwartz (1936)
Phil Ochs (1940-1976)
William Christie (1944)
Dolly Parton (1946)
Olaf Bär (1957)

and

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Italo Svevo (1861-1928)
Alexander Woollcott (1887-1943)
Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995)
Julian Barnes (1946)
Edwidge Danticat (1969)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1973, Leonard Bernstein leads a performance of Haydn's "Mass in Time of War" at a "Concert for Peace" at Washington DC's National Cathedral, with members of National Symphony, in protest against President Nixon, on the eve of Nixon's second term in office. The concert was timed to coincide with Nixon's official inaugural concert, which concluded with Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture"