August 28, 1959

1959Brian Thompson, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter^[†]

Brian Earl Thompson is an American actor. His career began with a small role in the 1984 film The Terminator. He played the villainous "Night Slasher" in the 1986 film Cobra. His first named role was on Werewolf, a horror series that ran during Fox's inaugural broadcasting year of 1987–1988. Thompson has played several characters in the Star Trek franchise—the most notable being the Klingon Lieutenant Klag, who informed Commander William Riker that "Gagh is always best when served live", the Alien Bounty Hunter on The X-Files, and Eddie Fiori on Kindred: The Embraced. In 2014, he produced, wrote and starred in the B movie parody The Extendables.

1959Bohuslav Martinů, Czech-American composer and educator (born 1890)^[†]

Bohuslav Jan Martinů was a Czech composer of modern classical music. He wrote 6 symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. He became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and briefly studied under Czech composer and violinist Josef Suk. After leaving Czechoslovakia in 1923 for Paris, Martinů deliberately withdrew from the Romantic style in which he had been trained. During the 1920s he experimented with modern French stylistic developments, exemplified by his orchestral works Half-time and La Bagarre. He also adopted jazz idioms, for instance in his Kitchen Revue.