Freethought Almanac

Lighting a candle in toxic air.
2014-06-01
June 1: Morgan Freeman (1937)

It was on this date, June 1, 1937, that American actor, film director, and narrator Morgan Freeman was born. Freeman has earned Academy Award nominations for his performances in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Invictus (2009), as well as winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the 2004 fight film Million […]

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2014-05-16
May 16: Studs Terkel

"I think of myself as an agnostic, but an agnostic is really a cowardly atheist," said Terkel.

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2014-05-12
May 12: Katherine Hepburn

"I'm an atheist, and that's it," said Hepburn. "Our Constitution was not intended to be used by ... any group to foist its personal religious beliefs on the rest of us."

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2014-05-09
May 9: Billy Joel (1949)

It was on this date, May 9, 1949, that American singer/songwriter and pianist Billy Joel was born William Martin Joel in the Bronx, New York City, but reared in Hicksville. His father was born in Germany and was a classical pianist, his mother was born in England. His parents, both non-observant Jews, divorced when Joel […]

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2014-05-07
May 7: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

“I have found some astonishing answers to my questionings as to God and religion in [Flaubert’s] book,” wrote Tchaikovsky. Flaubert was an Atheist.

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2014-05-07
May 7: Johannes Brahms

“For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts, as the one dieth, so dieth the other; … so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast,” quoted Brahms.

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2014-05-06
May 6: George Clooney

"I don't believe in Heaven and Hell. I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life – the only thing I know to exist – to be wasted."

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2014-04-15
April 15: Emma Thompson (1959)

It was on this date, April 15, 1959, that British actor, screenwriter and author Emma Thompson was born in Paddington, London, England, into a family of actors. At Newnham College, Cambridge, Thompson she became the first female member of the Footlights troupe. She won her first film role in 1989 in The Tall Guy. That […]

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2014-04-08
April 8: Yip Harburg (1896)

It was on this date, April 8, 1896, that American popular song lyricist Edgar Yipsel “Yip” Harburg was born Isidore Hochberg (Yiddish איסידור הוכברג) on the Lower East Side of New York City—into a Yiddish-speaking, Orthodox Jewish family that had emigrated from Russia. Best known as Edgar “Yip” Harburg, he attended high school and became […]

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2014-03-26
March 26: Keira Knightley (1985)

It was on this date, March 26, 1985, that English actress Keira Knightley was born Keira Christina Knightley in Teddington, London, UK, to an actress-playwright mother and an actor father. Following the family profession wasn’t a natural choice for her: as Knightley said later on, “I’m dyslexic, and at six years old [my parents] realized […]

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Ronald Bruce Meyer

Our Fearless Leader.


Daily Almanac

This Week in Freethought History (September 8-14)

Read about Skeptic Society founder Michael Shermer, French statesman Cardinal Richelieu, evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, Cosmonaut Gherman S. Titov, Bard of Baltimore H. L. Mencken, Roger Williams and freedom of conscience, feminist Margaret Sanger and more …



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