2022

Happy 76th birthday to Diane Keaton! The actress was born Diane Hall on January 5, 1946 in Los Angeles, California. Image: Diane Keaton / Firooz Zahedi, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) Her mother, Dorothy Keaton, was a homemaker and once won the “Mrs. Los Angeles” pageant. Her father, John Newton Ignatius “Jack” Hall, was a real estate broker and civil engineer. After deciding to pursue a career in acting, she took on her mother’s maiden name “Keaton” to avoid… Read the full story

What was your favorite fairy tale growing up? On this day in 1785, Jacob Grimm was born in Hanau, Hesse-Kassel. As one half of the Brothers Grimm, Jacob and his brother, Wilhelm, collected and recorded German folklore, which they would later publish as Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Image: Jacob Grimm / Wikimedia Commons In 1808, Jacob served as royal librarian for Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother, Jérôme, King of Westphalia. Influenced by the growing German Romantic movement, Jacob and… Read the full story

On this day in 1793, abolitionist and women’s rights activist Lucretia Mott was born. A pioneering social reformer, Mott was a central figure of the abolitionist and suffragist movements until her death in 1880. Image: Lucretia Mott / Library of Congress Mott was born Lucretia Coffin on January 3, 1793 in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Her fourth great grandfather, Peter Folger, was one of the first settlers of Nantucket and the maternal grandfather of Benjamin Franklin. This makes Mott and… Read the full story