Since I’ve started doing these birthday posts, I’ve never come upon a day like this. I wish I could spread out these birthdays, because normally, I would feature any number of these people.

The last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions, Guy Fawkes was born on this day in 1570. Thomas Jefferson was born in 1743. Butch Cassidy was born in 1866. Scrabble inventor Alfred Mosher Butts was born in 1899. American Atheists founder Madalyn Murray O’Hair was born in 1919. Don Adams was born in 1923. Playwright Lanford Wilson was born in 1937. And Christopher Hitchens was born in 1949.

Al Green is 67 today. Ron Perlman is 63. The great Amy Goodman is 56. And chess player Garry Kasparov is 50.

But the winner of the day, by less than I would have predicted, is the great playwright Samuel Beckett who was born on this day back in 1906. In celebration, here is his short (10 minute) play Ohio Impromptu starring Jeremy Irons:

Happy birthday Samuel Beckett!