Today in History- July 18th

Happy Birthday!
1720 Gilbert White, naturalist
1902 Chill Wills, actor (Billy the Kid, McClintock, Giant, The Yearling)
1909 Harriet Nelson, singer/actress (The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet)
1911 Hume Cronyn, actor (Cocoon, The Four Poster, Fox Fire)
1913 Red Skelton, actor/comedian
1918 Nelson Mandela, South African President
1921 John Glenn, astronaut/ US Senator (first to orbit the Earth)
1938 Paul Verhoeven, director (Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct, RoboCop)
1940 Joe Torre, New York Yankee baseball manager
1940 James Brolin, actor (Hotel, Marcus Welby, M.D) Mr. Barbra Streisand
1947 Steve Forbes, Forbes magazine
1956 Audrey Landers, actress (Dallas)
1961 Elizabeth McGovern, actress (Ordinary People, Racing with the Moon, Once Upon a Time in America)
1962 Lee Arenberg, actor (Robocop 3, Waterworld, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl)
1967 Vin Diesel, actor (The Pacifier, XXX, The Fast and the Furious)
1979 Jared Hess, director/ writer (Napoleon Dynamite)
1980 Kristen Bell, actress (Veronica Mars)

Deaths:
1610 Michelangelo Merisi, artist (David)
1817 Jane Austen, author (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility)