March 17, 1956

1956Patrick McDonnell, American author and illustrator^[†]

Patrick McDonnell is a cartoonist, author, and playwright. He is the creator of the daily comic strip Mutts, which follows the adventures of a dog and a cat, that has been syndicated since 1994. Prior to creating Mutts, he was a prolific magazine illustrator, and would frequently include a dog in the backgrounds of his drawings.

1956Rory McGrath, British comedian, television personality, and writer^[†]

Patrick Rory McGrath is a British comedian, television personality, and writer. He came to prominence in the comedy show Who Dares Wins and was a regular panellist on the game show They Think It's All Over for many years. He acted in the sitcom Chelmsford 123 and appeared in the ITV reality show Sugar Free Farm.

1956Fred Allen, American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and author (born 1894)^[†]

John Florence Sullivan, known professionally as Fred Allen, was an American comedian. His absurdist topically-pointed radio program The Fred Allen Show (1932–1949) made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the Golden Age of American radio.

1956Irène Joliot-Curie, French physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1897)^[†]

Irène Joliot-Curie was a French chemist and physicist who received the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, for their discovery of induced radioactivity. They were the second married couple, after her parents, to win the Nobel Prize, adding to the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. This made the Curies the family with the most Nobel laureates to date.