There are 3 entries for this date: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Steinbeck and Sonia Johnson.

On this date in 1807, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Maine, the son of an attorney, who was also a member of Congress. Longfellow's mother was a descendant of John Alden of the Mayflower. Henry began writing poems at 13. He graduated from Bowdoin College, where classmates included Nathaniel Hawthorne. Longfellow traveled widely, married twice (both wives dying tragically), and became professor of modern languages at Harvard. He was the 19th century's most popular American poet ("I shot an arrow into the air"). His poems included "The Village Blacksmith" and "Paul Revere's Ride," as well as "Evangeline" (1847) and "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855). William Ellery Channing reputedly said of Longfellow, a lifelong Unitarian, that "he did not belong to any one sect but rather to the community of those free minds who loved the truth." D. 1882.

On this date in 1902, Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, Calif. He studied marine biology at Stanford, but did not graduate. His long list of humanistic novels include the 20th century classics Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which won a Pulitzer Prize He also wrote To a God Unknown (1933), The Red Pony (1937), East of Eden (1952), and The Winter of Our Discontent (1961). Near the end of his life, he wrote his personal physician, Dr. Kenny Fox: "Now finally, I am not religious so that I have no apprehension of a hereafter, either a hope or reward or a fear of punishment. It is not a matter of belief. It is what I feel to be true from my experience, observation, and simple tissue feeling." Steinbeck was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. (Cited in Who's Who in Hell, edited by Warren Allen Smith.) D. 1968.

On this date in 1936, Sonia Johnson was born a 5th generation Mormon in Malad, Idaho. She graduated from Utah State University, pursuing her M.A. and Ed.D. from Rutgers after marrying, and through many moves and pregnancies. She taught English at American and foreign universities, working part-time as a teacher while accompanying her husband on overseas jobs. The family returned to the United States in 1976, buying a house in Virginia, one of the states that had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. Sonia became such an ardent supporter of the ERA that she was excommunicated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1979. Sonia exposed the role of the wealthy Mormon church in sabotaging passage of the ERA. She went on a 37-day hunger strike in the Illinois statehouse in 1982 during the last days of the ERA countdown, to symbolize how "women hunger for justice." She ran on a feminist ticket for President of the United States in 1984 as the candidate of the Citizens Party, becoming the first third-party candidate to qualify for primary matching funds. In countless speeches she pointed out: "Nobody's ever fought a revolution for women." She wrote eloquently of her experiences in From Housewife to Heretic (1981). When a reporter for the Atlanta Constitution asked if Sonia had acquired any non-Mormon habits, "alluding, I'm sure, to smoking and drinking," she replied: "Yes, in fact I have. I have acquired the habit of free thought."