Today is St. Patrick’s Day. It commemorates the date that is traditionally believed to be the death date of Pātricius, a Roman-British prelate who served as a Bishop of the Church in Ireland in the Fifth Century. March 17 has been celebrated as a feast day in his honor throughout the Christian world since the early 1600s.

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On this day in 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama fled Lhasa, Tibet, for India.

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Fred Allen died 60 years ago today.

Amos Alonzo Stagg died on this date in 1965 at the age of 102. Stagg was associated with collegiate sports from his days as a student at Yale University in the 1880s until his retirement from Stockton College in 1960. He was a college football coach continuously since 1890. Almost every play formation and tactic that one may associate with American football—including the huddle, the end-around play, the forward pass, and even the wearing of pads—was an innovation Stagg developed or had a hand in developing in his seven decades, most of them as a head coach, and most of them as the head coach at The University of Chicago. (He is honored in the College Football Hall of Fame, of course, but he also coached Chicago’s baseball and basketball teams and is in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.)

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Kate Greenaway was born 170 years ago today. Nat King Cole was born on this date in 1919.

 
Rudolf Nureyev was born in 1938 on this date.

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John Sebastian is 72 today. Pattie Boyd is 72 today. William Gibson is 68 today. Patrick Duffy is 67. Kurt Russell is 65. Lesley-Anne Down is 62. Gary Sinise is 61. Rob Lowe is 52 today. Billy Corgan is 49. Mia Hamm is 44.

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