Classics Calendar for November 17

Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle
in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver

Here are today's milestones:

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Born on this day:

Shelby Foote (1916; died June 27, 2005) American historian and novelist; The Civil War: A Narrative; numerous Ken Burns specials

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Martin Scorsese (1942) American filmmaker; Taxi Driver; Raging Bull; The Last Temptation of Christ; Goodfellas; Gangs of New York; The Aviator; The Departed; Hugo; The Wolf of Wall Street; Academy Award

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Died on this day:

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1494; born February 24, 1463) Italian philosopher; Oratio de hominis dignitate (Oration on the Dignity of Man)

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Auguste Rodin (1917; born November 12, 1840) French sculptor; The Age of Bronze; The Walking Man; The Burghers of Calais; The Kiss; The Thinker

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Doris Lessing (2013; born October 22, 1919) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer who wrote The Grass is Singing; Children of Violence (pentalogy); The Golden Notebook; The Good Terrorist; Canopus in Argos: Archives (pentalogy); Nobel Prize in Literature (2007)

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Bonus Classic:

Volsunga Saga (Icelandic) Icelandic prose saga on the origin and decline of the Volsung clan

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