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Freethought of the Day

Freethought events in history. Birthdays and quotes of famous freethinkers.
Unless otherwise indicated, these are birthdates.

ALL JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEPT OCT NOV DEC

JANUARY

1: "Wall of Separation" Letter Coined · Ouida · Michel Onfray
2: Isaac Asimov · Steve Benson
3: Marcus Tullius Cicero (Quote)
4: J.R. Simplot
5: Felix Manz (Died)
6: Carl Sandburg · Nick Clegg · Nigella Lawson
7: Zora Neale Hurston · John E. Remsburg · Giuliano Ferrara · Ralph Miliband
8: Butterfly McQueen · Stephen Hawking · Thomas Aikenhead (Died) · Carl Rogers · Lewis Lapham
9: Simone de Beauvoir · Dave Matthews
10: Col. Ethan Allen
11: Aldo Leopold · Alice Paul · G.W. Foote
12: Ruth Hurmence Green · Jack London
13: Ernestine L. Rose
14: Steven Soderbergh · Andy Rooney
15: Martin Luther King, Jr. · Moliere · Jean Meslier
16: Statute for Religious Freedom (Passed)
17: Benjamin Franklin · Sean Danielsen · Javed Akhtar
18: A.A. Milne · Montesquieu · Peter Annet (Died) · Niall Shanks · James F. Crow
19: Edgar Allan Poe · Auguste Comte · Julian Barnes
20: Bill Maher · Fred Whitehead · Martin Luther King Jr Federal Holiday
21: Helen H. Gardener · Achille Murat
22: Beatrice Webb · Lord Byron · Gotthold Ephraim Lessing · Johan August Strindberg · Roe v. Wade Issued
23: Arthur Schopenhauer (Quote)
24: Frederick the Great · Joseph Mazzini Wheeler · Garrett Lisi
25: Virginia Woolf · Robert Burns · Sherwin Wine · W. Somerset Maugham
26: Paul Newman · Jules Feiffer
27: Jerome Kern · David Friedrich Strauss · Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart · Mikhail Baryshnikov · Patton Oswalt
28: John Baskerville · Alan Alda
29: Thomas Paine · Robin Morgan · W.C. Fields · Albert Gallatin · Frederick Delius
30: Saul Alinsky · Jack Germond
31: Rupert Hughes

FEBRUARY

1: Langston Hughes · Terry Jones
2: James Joyce · Ayn Rand · Havelock Ellis · Talleyrand · Burton Lane
3: James A. Michener · Michael Martin
4: Eugene M. MacDonald · Carl Brandes · Bill Haywood
5: Michel de Montaigne (Quote)
6: Christopher Marlowe
7: Charles Dickens · Sinclair Lewis · Madison Arnold · Eddie Izzard · G.H. Hardy · Emo Philips
8: John Ruskin · Philip Appleman
9: Alice Walker · Amy Lowell · James Parton · Lucilio (Giulio Cesare) Vanini (Died) · Aletta Jacobs · Jacques Monod
10: Eliza Lynn Linton
11: Thomas Alva Edison · Lydia Maria Child · Leslie Nielsen · Natalie Dormer · Momus
12: Charles Darwin · Abraham Lincoln · George Meredith · Francois Bancel
13: Henry Rollins
14: Frederick Douglass · Teller
15: Matt Groening · Galileo Galilei · Jeremy Bentham · Susan B. Anthony
16: Christopher Eccleston · Sir Francis Galton · Natalie Angier · Octave Mirbeau
17: Giordano Bruno (Executed)
18: Matt Dillon
19: Svante August Arrhenius · Nicolaus Copernicus · Andre Breton
20: E.B. Foote · Robert Altman
21: Thomas Huxley (Quote)
22: Luis Buñuel · George Washington · Arthur Schopenhauer · Josephine K. Henry · James Russell Lowell · August Bebel
23: W.E.B. Du Bois · Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
24: George Augustus Moore · Grant Allen
25: Anthony Burgess · Hemant Mehta
26: Tony Randall · Victor Marie Hugo
27: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · John Steinbeck · Sonia Johnson · Charles Watts
28: Michel de Montaigne · Linus Pauling · Robin Cook · Daniel Handler
29: Ed Schempp

MARCH

1: Robert Lowell · Queen Caroline · Javier Bardem · Nuala O'Faolain
2: John Irving · Gerald H.F. Gardner
3: William Godwin · Ira Glass · Sir Edward Herbert · Brian Cox
4: Alan Hale
5: Rosa Luxemburg · Penn Jillette
6: David Gilmour · John Stossel
7: Luther Burbank
8: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · Anniversary of McCollum v. Board of Education Decision · International Women's Day
9: Michael Kinsley · Paul "PZ" Myers
10: H.L. Mencken (Quote)
11: Douglas Adams
12: James Taylor · Edward Albee · Harry Harrison
13: Joseph Priestley
14: Albert Einstein · Judge Arnold Krekel
15: David Cronenberg
16: Maxim Gorky · James Madison · Rosa Bonheur · Richard Stallman
17: Kate Greenaway · Moncure Daniel Conway · Marie Jeanne Roland de la Platiere · Alexander McQueen · Patrick Duffy · Robert Blatchford
18: Marilla M. Ricker · Weiss v. the District Board
19: Bruce Willis · Sir Richard F. Burton · Jean Astruc · Henry Morgentaler
20: B.F. Skinner · Henrik Ibsen · Pamela Sargent · William Stewart Ross · The Woman Rebel Founded · Carl Reiner
21: Cenk Uygur
22: Stephen Sondheim · Stephen Pearl Andrews
23: Erich Fromm · William Smith · Richard Proctor
24: Robert Louis Heilbroner · Joel Barlow · David Suzuki
25: Robbie Fulks · Elton John · Gloria Steinem · Matilda Joslyn Gage · Courtlandt Palmer
26: Richard Dawkins · A.E. Housman · Robert Frost · Edward Sorel · Keira Knightley
27: John Ballance
28: Daniel C. Dennett · Ishmael Jaffree · Jane Rule · Neil Kinnock · Corliss Lamont
29: Eric Idle · Ludwig Buchner
30: Charles Booth
31: John Fowles · Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner · Olive Schreiner

APRIL

1: Milan Kundera · Abraham H. Maslow · Vladimir Pozner
2: Emile Zola · Lloyd Morain · Léon Gambetta
3: Mathilde Franziska Giesler Anneke · John Burroughs · Marlon Brando
4: David Cross
5: Thomas Hobbes · Algernon Charles Swinburne · Arthur Hailey
6: James D. Watson · Harry Houdini
7: Elihu Palmer · Abner Kneeland
8: E.Y. (Yip) Harburg · Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon · Alex Day
9: Paul Robeson · Charles Baudelaire · Tom Lehrer · Paul Krassner
10: Thomas Allsop
11: George E. Macdonald
12: Friedrich Nietzsche (Quote)
13: Mattie Parry Krekel · Christopher Hitchens · Thomas Jefferson · George Jacob Holyoake
14: Rod Steiger · Bruce Sterling · Richard Jeni · Joseph Fletcher
15: Thomas Szasz · Emma Thompson · Emile Durkheim
16: Charlie Chaplin · Anatole France
17: Isak Dinesen
18: Clarence Darrow
19: Bertrand Russell (Quote)
20: David Chalmers
21: Clémence Royer
22: Jack Nicholson · "Mme. de Stael" · Robert Patterson
23: William Shakespeare · Joseph Turner · Peter Watson · Sergei Prokofiev
24: Clarence Darrow (Quote)
25: William J. Brennan (Quote)
26: David Hume · Eugene Delacroix
27: Edward Gibbon · Mary Wollstonecraft · Herbert Spencer · Ulysses S. Grant · Russell T Davies · Hubert Harrison
28: Thomas Scott · Sir Terence (Terry) Pratchett
29: Uma Thurman
30: Cloris Leachman · Claude Shannon

MAY

1: Joseph Heller
2: Catherine the Great
3: Steven Weinberg · Pete Seeger · Pete Seeger
4: Thomas Huxley · George Will
5: John Scopes (Arrested) · Karl Marx
6: George Clooney · Sigmund Freud
7: Johannes Brahms · Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky · Robert Browning
8: Ella E. Gibson · David Attenborough
9: Billy Joel
10: Charles Knowlton · Jonathan Edwards · Ariel Durant
11: Richard Feynman · Irving Berlin
12: Katharine Hepburn · George Carlin · Florence Nightingale · Dante Gabriel Rossetti
13: Roger Zelazny
14: Robert Owen · Mark Zuckerberg · Robyn Blumner
15: Seymour Hersh (Quote)
16: Louis "Studs" Terkel · Henry Fonda · Brian Eno
17: Ralph Waldo Emerson (Quote)
18: Bertrand Russell
19: Lorraine Hansberry · Nora Ephron
20: Stephen Girard · Honore de Balzac · John Stuart Mill · Ron Reagan
21: Alexander Pope
22: G.A. Wells · Harvey Milk
23: Margaret Fuller · Pär Lagerkvist
24: Rufus King Noyes
25: Ralph Waldo Emerson · Sir Ian McKellen
26: Jack Kevorkian · Matt Stone
27: Isadora Duncan · Harlan Ellison · Adam Carolla · Lawrence Krauss
28: Epicurus (Quote)
29: Peter Higgs
30: Mikhail Bakunin · A. Stone Freedberg
31: Walt Whitman · Graham Wallas

JUNE

1: Marilyn Monroe
2: Barbara Smoker · Edward Elgar
3: Edward Livingston Youmans, M.D. · James Hutton · Rafael Nadal
4: Wallace v. Jaffree · Angelina Jolie
5: Adam Smith · Edme Marie Gustave Tridon
6: Harvey Fierstein
7: Alice Hubbard · Charles Strouse
8: Robert Schumann · Frank Lloyd Wright · Francis Crick · Tim Berners-Lee · Sara Paretsky
9: Cole Porter · Natalie Portman
10: E. O. Wilson · Maurice Sendak
11: Richard Strauss · Joseph Lewis · Hugh Laurie · Robert Munsch
12: Harriet Martineau
13: Ann Druyan
14: Robert Marion "Fighting Bob" La Follette Sr. · Margaret Bourke-White · Wafa Sultan · Mary Morain · Ernesto 'Che' Guevara
15: Mark Twain (Quote)
16: Joyce Carol Oates
17: Bible Reading in Public Schools Halted
18: Barack Hussain Obama Sr. · Roger Ebert
19: Salman Rushdie · Elbert Hubbard · Supreme Court Affirms No Religious Test for Public Office
20: Ira Cardiff · Amanda Donohoe
21: Ian McEwan · Jean-Paul Sartre · Edward Snowden · Summer Solstice
22: Julian Huxley · Giuseppe Mazzini · Bill Blass · Meryl Streep · Erich Maria Remarque
23: Daniel Henry Chamberlain · Joss Whedon · Alan Turing
24: Ambrose Bierce · Michael Newdow
25: George Orwell · Dan Barker · Ricky Gervais · Engel v Vitale
26: Pearl Buck
27: Emma Goldman
28: Richard Rodgers · Ashley Montagu · Jean Jacques Rousseau · Paul Broca · Lalla Ward
29: Frank Loesser
30: John B.S. Haldane (Quote)

JULY

1: Edward Clodd
2: Barbara G. Walker · Civil Rights Act Passed · George Sand
3: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
4: Declaration of Independence · Giuseppe Garibaldi · Kay Nolte Smith · Stephen Foster
5: Samuel Butler (Quote)
6: Aleksandr Pushkin · Benjamin Underwood · Frida Kahlo · Peter Singer
7: Robert A. Heinlein · Josiah P. Mendum · Gustav Mahler · Eleanor Clift
8: Manoel Jose d'Arriaga · Harriet Johnson · Kevin Bacon
9: Sherry Matulis · Oliver Sacks
10: Marcel Proust · Camille Pissarro · Ernie Chambers
11: John Q. Adams
12: Henry David Thoreau · Pablo Neruda · Phillip Adams
13: Harrison Ford · Sidney Webb
14: Ingmar Bergman · Jane Lynch
15: Iris Murdoch · Jesse Ventura · Adam Savage · David Miliband
16: Tony Kushner
17: Phyllis Diller
18: William Makepeace Thackeray
19: Anniversary of Seneca Falls Convention · Fred Edwords
20: E. Haldeman-Julius
21: Anthony Collins
22: Tom Robbins · Steve Albini
23: Samuel Porter Putnam · Daniel Radcliffe · Woody Harrelson · Hendrik Hertzberg
24: Simon Bolivar · Vern Bullough
25: Eric Hoffer
26: George Bernard Shaw · Daniel Everett · Stanley Kubrick · Aldous Huxley · Lucy Colman · Mick Jagger
27: Helen Taylor
28: Anne Hutchinson (Banished) · 14th Amendment Ratified · Meg Bowman
29: Wil Wheaton
30: Thorstein Veblen
31: Paul D. Boyer · John Searle

AUGUST

1: Herman Melville · Jean Baptiste LaMarck
2: Peter O'Toole · James Baldwin
3: Rupert Brooke
4: Percy Bysshe Shelley · Helen Thomas
5: Ellery Schempp · Clara Bewick Colby · Guy de Maupassant
6: Alfred Tennyson · Lawrence Lader
7: Amazing James Randi · Charles Southwell
8: Tom Brazaitis · Paul Dirac
9: Sigmund Freud (Quote)
10: Alain (Quote)
11: Robert G. Ingersoll · Steve Wozniak
12: Lillie Devereux Blake
13: Felix Adler
14: John Galsworthy
15: Maria Deraismes · Julia Child
16: Matthew Tindal · James Cameron
17: Alex Honnold
18: Robert Taylor
19: Pierre Jean de Beranger · Gene Roddenberry
20: Bo Burnham
21: Barry Goldwater (Quote)
22: Claude Debussy · Diana Nyad
23: Anatole France (Quote)
24: Howard Zinn · Stephen Fry
25: Horace Seaver · Taslima Nasrin
26: Barbara Ehrenreich · Zona Gale · Robert Walpole · Anniversary of Women's Equality Day
27: Granville Stuart
28: C. Wright Mills · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · Leo Tolstoy
29: Xenophanes (Quote)
30: Ted Williams · Mary Godwin Shelley · Warren Buffett
31: Anatole France (Quote)

SEPTEMBER

1: Freethought Today · Chapman Cohen · Edgar Rice Burroughs · Alan Dershowitz · Pat Duffy Hutcheon
2: Claire Eglin Culhane
3: Viktor E. Lennstrand (Swedish freethought rally)
4: Sam Harris (Quote) · Richard Wright
5: Jean de La Bruyere (Quote)
6: Frances Wright · Jane Addams · Bruno Bauer · Roger Waters · Robert M. Pirsig
7: Malcolm Bradbury
8: Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Quote)
9: Michel de Montaigne (Quote)
10: Stephen J. Gould
11: Jessica Mitford
12: H.L. Mencken
13: Don Addis
14: Alexander von Humboldt · Margaret Sanger · Ivan Pavlov
15: Porfirio Diaz · James Fenimore Cooper
16: Viscount Bolingbroke
17: Theodore Schroeder · Sean B. Carroll
18: Catherine Fahringer · Jose Manuel Balmaceda (Died) · Steven Pinker
19: Frances Farmer · Jean Baptiste Delambre · Simon Singh
20: Upton Sinclair · Robert Emmet
21: H.G. Wells · Etta Semple · James Watson
22: Parker Pillsbury · Eva Ingersoll
23: Ani DiFranco · Victoria Woodhull · Walter Lippmann
24: F. Scott Fitzgerald
25: Theophile de Viau (Died) · Dmitriy Shostakovich · Christopher Reeve · Paul MacCready
26: George Gershwin · Charles Bradlaugh
27: Albert Ellis
28: Georges Clemenceau · Robert Stout · Prosper Merimee · Janeane Garofalo · Greydon Square · Bhagat Singh
29: Michelle Bachelet · Julia Gillard
30: Phil Plait

OCTOBER

1: Annie Besant · Charlie McDonnell
2: Sting · Graham Greene · Christian de Duve
3: Gore Vidal
4: Vitaly Ginzburg
5: Denis Diderot · Bob Geldof · Sean M. Carroll · Neil deGrasse Tyson
6: Alfred Naquet · Emily Cape · Matthew Sweet
7: Sir Harold Kroto · Joe Hill · Irene Stephenson · Tim Minchin · Joy Behar · Dan Savage
8: James Fergus
9: John Lennon · Giuseppe Verdi · Roger Williams (Banished) · Peter Lipton
10: Julia Sweeney · Harold Pinter · Henry Cavendish · Fridtjof Nansen · Thelonious Monk
11: Eleanor Roosevelt
12: Ralph Vaughan Williams
13: Lenny Bruce (Quote)
14: Katha Pollitt · E. E. Cummings
15: Friedrich Nietzsche · John Kenneth Galbraith · P.G. Wodehouse · Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
16: Eugene O'Neill · Oscar Wilde · Lilian Leland · Mary Daly
17: John Wilkes · Georg Buchner · William Anders
18: James Madison (Quote)
19: Alton Lemon · Philip Pullman · Trey Parker · Lewis Wolpert · Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
20: John Dewey
21: Martin Gardner · Samuel Taylor Coleridge · Ursula K. LeGuin · Tariq Ali
22: Doris Lessing
23: George Santayana (Quote)
24: Kevin Kline · Lakshmi Sahgal
25: Georges Bizet · Pierre Eugene Marcelin Berthelot · Alexander Buchner · Max Stirner
26: Seth Macfarlane
27: Michael Servetus · Sharlot Hall · Niccolo Paganini · Klas Pontus Arnoldson · Warren Allen Smith · William Maclure
28: Joaquin Phoenix · Elsa Lanchester · Matt Smith
29: Edward Truelove · Sir Alfred Jules Ayer
30: John Adams · MC Paul Barman
31: John Keats

NOVEMBER

1: Pat Condell · Sir Hermann Bondi
2: Burt Lancaster · Annie Laurie Gaylor
3: Andre Malraux · Ludovic Kennedy
4: Eden Phillpotts · Maud Ingersoll · Kathy Griffin
5: Ella Wheeler Wilcox · Eugene V. Debs · Harriet Law · Will Durant
6: Pat Tillman · Vashti Cromwell McCollum · Francis Ellingwood Abbot · Thandie Newton · Greg Graffin
7: Marie Curie · Albert Camus · Andrew Dickson White
8: Ben Bova · Edmund Halley
9: Carl Sagan · Ivan Turgenev · Robert Dale Owen
10: Friedrich von Schiller
11: Kurt Vonnegut · Joseph McCabe · Pete Stark · Hugh Everett III · Veterans Day
12: Elizabeth Cady Stanton · Auguste Rodin
13: Robert Louis Stevenson · Ayaan Hirsi Ali · Roy Torcaso · Jaime Gil de Biedma
14: Aaron Copland · Jawaharlal Nehru · J.M. Robertson
15: Gora · William Pitt
16: George Seldes · José Saramago
17: Voltairine de Cleyre · Stephen Symonds Foster
18: Margaret Atwood · Pierre Bayle · Chalmers Roberts · Ben Winter
19: Indira Gandhi · Jodie Foster · Myla Goldberg
20: Thomas Chatterton
21: Bjork · Voltaire
22: George Eliot · Rodney Dangerfield
23: Marie Bashkirtseff · Margaret Knight · Jennifer Hecht
24: Scott Joplin · Benedict Spinoza · Billy Connolly
25: Anne Nicol Gaylor · Andrew Carnegie
26: Charles Schulz · Edwin Kagin
27: Bill Nye · Bruce Lee · Happy Thanksgiving!
28: William Blake · Friedrich Engels · Sir Leslie Stephen
29: Percy Bysshe Shelley (Quote)
30: Mark Twain · John Toland · Louise Victorine Ackermann · Gael Garcia Bernal

DECEMBER

1: Woody Allen · Sarah Silverman
2: Kristin Lems
3: Julianne Moore · Joseph Conrad
4: Thomas Carlyle · Samuel Butler
5: Sonia Johnson (Excommunicated) · "Witches Bull" Issued · Carolyn Hax
6: Ira Gershwin
7: Noam Chomsky · Heywood C. Broun
8: Baron d'Holbach · James Thurber · Bjornstjerne Bjornson · Diego Rivera
9: John Malkovich · Richard Carlile · Hermione Gingold
10: William Lloyd Garrison · Thomas Gore
11: Ellen Key · Hector Berlioz
12: Gustave Flaubert · Jay Gorney
13: Queen Silver
14: Titus Voelkel
15: Adoption of the Bill of Rights · Oscar Niemeyer
16: George Santayana · Ludwig van Beethoven · Arthur C. Clarke
17: Frances Hamerstrom · Marquise du Chatelet · Kerry Packer
18: Brad Pitt · Pedro Pablo Abarca Aranda · Susan Sackett
19: Richard Leakey
20: Sidney Hook
21: Frank Zappa · Rebecca West · David Randolph · Paul Winchell · Winter Solstice · Paul Kurtz
23: Elmina D. Slenker · D.M. Bennett · Francisco Manuel do Nascimento · Eddie Vedder
24: Matthew Arnold · John Morley · Christopher Buckley · Ed Miliband
25: Leo Pfeffer · Quentin Crisp · Clara Barton · Rod Serling
26: Steve Allen · James Mercer
27: Marlene Dietrich · Sarah Vowell
28: Linus Torvalds · Maarten Schmidt · Wendy Kaminer
29: Paula Poundstone
30: Jerry Coyne
31: Henri Matisse

MARCH

10: Pete Seeger

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