Happy Birthday September 25

The Macon, Georgia, slave William Craft was born on September 25, 1824. He and Ellen Craft escaped to the North in December 1848 by traveling openly by train and steamboat, arriving in Philadelphia on Christmas Day. Ellen, who was light skinned, dressed as a white male printer with a sling to hide the fact that she could not write and passed as William's slave owner. Eventually, they fled to Liverpool, England. The Crafts published a written account, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; Or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, which reached wide audiences in Great Britain and the United States.

Ellen and William Craft

The Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich was born at Podolskaya street in Saint Petersburg, Russia on September 25, 1906 to a biologist father and engineer mother. Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Soviet chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a contentious relationship with the government. His oeuvre included 15 symphonies, six concerti, 15 string quartets, a piano quintet, two piano trios, and a substantial quantity of film music.

The actor and rapper Will Smith was born on September 25, 1968 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Caroline (Bright), a school board administrator, and Willard Carroll Smith, Sr. a refrigeration engineer. Smith first fame as a member of a hip-hop duo under the name The Fresh Prince. He became an actor when he starred on the television show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as Will Smith, a teenager from Philadelphia sent to live with his rich relatives in Southern California.

For more September 25th anniversaries, including the birth of Peking opera, the first blind flight and the founding of the rock group U2 check out OnThatDay.