Top 10 February 26 Birthdays
10. February 26, 1973: Marshall Faulk. A 7-time Pro Bowler, he could have been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on his rushing statistics alone: 12,279 yards, including 100 touchdowns. Or, he could have been elected on his receiving stats alone: 767 catches for 6,875 yards, including 36 touchdowns. He was the best player on the St. Louis Rams' "Greatest Show On Turf" team that won Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000, and perhaps the best player in the game at the time.
Honorable Mention: February 26, 1946: Colin Bell. Star of the Manchester City team that won England's Football League in 1968 and the FA Cup in 1969.
Somewhat Honorable Mention: February 26, 1973: Ole Gunnar Solskjær. He scored the goal that won the 1999 UEFA Champions League for Manchester United. I say "Somewhat Honorable" because that United team was full of cheats, although Solskjær was never considered to be one of them. More recently, he was considerably less successful as their manager.
9. February 26, 1846: William F. Cody. Buffalo Bill brought the legend of the American "Wild West" to the East, and the world. Of course, a lot of it was hogwash.
8. February 26, 1920: Tony Randall. He was more than just Felix Unger on The Odd Couple.
Honorable Mention: February 26, 1908: Tex Avery. An animator, he was crucial in creating and developing Bugs Bunny and the other Warner Brothers "Looney Tunes" characters.
Honorable Mention: February 26, 1914: Robert Alda. The father of Alan Alda, he was the first actor to play Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls on Broadway. Marlon Brando played the role in the movie.
Honorable Mention: February 26, 1921: Betty Hutton. One of the top singer-actresses of the 1940s, she played Annie Oakley in the film version of Annie Get Your Gun.
7. February 26, 1887: Grover Cleveland Alexander. He's best known for the film The Winning Team, in which Ronald Reagan plays a hungover Alexander striking out Tony Lazzeri to win the 1926 World Series for the St. Louis Cardinals. In fact, there were 2 more innings, but Alexander did finish it off.
Alexander won 373 games, tied with Christy Mathewson for the most in National League history. He pitched 90 shutouts, 2nd behind Walter Johnson for the most all-time. He pitched 16 shutouts in 1916, a record, despite being a righthanded pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, who played in Baker Bowl, which had a ridiculously short right field fence. He deserved better than to be suffer with alcoholism and epilepsy. (Ironically, Lazzeri was also an epileptic, and died first, from falling down the stairs due to a seizure.)
6. February 26, 1928: Fats Domino. A charter inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and a reminder of how important the piano was to rock's development.
Honorable Mention: February 26, 1971: Max Martin. You may not know his name, his face, or his voice, but you know his work. Here's a few of the songs that the Swedish songwriter-producer has written: "...Baby One More Time," "3" and "Hold It Against Me" by Britney Spears; "It's Gonna Be Me" by NYSNC; "I Kissed a Girl," "Teenage Dream" and "Roar" by Katy Perry; "So What" and "Raise Your Glass" by Pink; "One More Night" by Maroon 5; and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," "Shake It Off" and "Bad Blood" by Taylor Swift.
Dishonorable Mention: February 26, 1953: Michael Bolton. This guy once needed the lyrics of the National Anthem written on his hand so he could sing it before a Playoff game at Fenway Park. And he still wasn't the biggest cheater in the ballpark that day. Or the person with the most annoying hair, although he used to frequently be that.
5. February 26, 1928: Ariel Sharon. He was Israel's Ulysses S. Grant: The most important general after the country's founding, he proved a terrible head of government.
Honorable Mention: February 26, 1958: Tim Kaine. Governor of Virginia and a U.S. Senator, in 2016, he was elected Vice President of the United States on Hillary Clinton's ticket. Alas...
Dishonorable Mention: February 26, 1931: Robert Novak. His nationally-syndicated column with Rowland Evans was a must-read for their fellow conservatives and their liberal opponents alike. He was a founding panelist on NBC's The McLaughlin Group, and then on CNN's Crossfire. But as he got older, he got more partisan, considerably nastier, and outright dishonest.
Ironically, in the 2000s, before he moved to Fox News, Tucker Carlson was considered the saner conservative option on Crossfire.
Dishonorable Mention: February 26, 1954: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. President of Turkey since 2014, he is a rotten dictator. Naturally, both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin like him.
4. February 26, 1916: Jackie Gleason. He wasn't just Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners: He could do drama as well as comedy, as when he played Minnesota Fats in The Hustler. (Pool legend Rudolf Wanderone took the name Minnesota Fats from that movie. Gleason wasn't playing him.)
3. February 26, 1829: Levi Strauss. A German immigrant, he used canvas from his family's dry goods business to create blue jeans. To this day, jeans are often called "Levi's."
2. February 26, 1802: Victor Hugo. He wrote The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in 1831, and Les Misérables in 1862. In 1869, he wrote The Man Who Laughs, which was later turned into a silent film that inspired Batman's nemesis the Joker. (And a film titled The Bat helped inspire Batman. Ironically, The Bat was a villain, and The Man Who Laughs was a tragic hero.)
Honorable Mention: February 26, 1564: Christopher Marlowe. A contemporary and competitor of William Shakespeare, his early death rendered him second-best.
1. February 26, 1932: Johnny Cash. Bono of U2 once called him "the most male voice in Christendom." If America had a voice, it would sound like Johnny Cash.
Still alive as of this writing: Faulk, Solskjær, Martin, Kaine, Erdoğan.
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