Today’s ledger is another remarkable one.

A pioneer of modern chemistry.

A saint whose name became synonymous with service to the poor.

A Victorian prince.

Captain Kirk.

Kevin McCallister.

A queen of Latin pop.

Comedians, actors, musicians and performers whose work has crossed generations.

And on the Passings side...

the father of microbiology.

The father of American psychology.

An aviation legend.

A solo circumnavigator.

The Man of a Thousand Faces.

A Broadway giant.

A beloved game-show host.

And one extraordinary performer who technically belongs to yesterday’s ledger, but whose passing was reported after we had already closed it.

So before August 26 begins...

we have one stage light to relight.

🎭🕯️

Our August 26 reference supplies today’s Births & Passings roster.

Yesterday we said goodbye to Dolly Parton.

We did not yet know that August 25 had taken another extraordinary entertainer.

Tim Curry died Tuesday, August 25, at his Los Angeles home. He was 80. His death was confirmed by his longtime representative. (AP News)

And there is really only one place to begin.

Curry originated the role in the stage production of The Rocky Horror Show before exploding onto movie screens in The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1975.

It was outrageous.

Theatrical.

Provocative.

Funny.

Sexy.

Strange.

And absolutely impossible to confuse with anybody else.

🎭💋

Frank-N-Furter became one of cinema’s defining cult characters and helped turn Rocky Horror into something larger than a movie.

Midnight screenings.

Costumes.

Audience participation.

Rice.

Toast.

Newspapers.

Callbacks shouted at the screen by people who knew every frame.

Generation after generation discovered it.

And at the center of the glorious lunacy stood Tim Curry.

But reducing Curry to Frank-N-Furter would miss the extraordinary range of the actor underneath the corset.

He became:

🎲 Wadsworth in Clue
🎈 Pennywise in It
👑 King Arthur in Spamalot
🎼 Mozart in Broadway’s Amadeus
👹 Darkness in Legend
🏨 the memorably suspicious concierge in Home Alone 2

...plus decades of television, stage work, animation and voice performances.

Three Tony nominations.

An unmistakable voice.

An ability to occupy a character so thoroughly that the temperature of the entire production seemed to change when he entered.

After a serious stroke in 2012 affected his mobility, Curry continued working and appearing before fans. His former Rocky Horror colleagues have remembered not merely the performer, but his generosity and kindness. (People.com)

That matters.

Because eccentricity made Tim Curry famous.

Talent made him durable.

But the human being is what colleagues remember when the curtain finally falls.

So yes...

today we give Dr. Frank-N-Furter the entrance we missed yesterday.

One more spotlight.

One more curtain call.

One more appreciative roar from the midnight audience.

🎭💋🕯️

There really was nobody quite like you.

One of the foundational figures of modern chemistry.

Lavoisier helped replace vague chemical speculation with measurement, experimentation and quantitative analysis.

His work clarified combustion, helped establish the role of oxygen and contributed to the principle of conservation of mass.

Chemistry existed before Lavoisier.

After him, it increasingly became a modern science.

🧪⚗️

Husband and consort of Queen Victoria.

Albert became deeply involved in education, science, industry and the arts.

He was instrumental in the Great Exhibition of 1851, one of the Victorian era’s great showcases of technology and industrial achievement.

His death at only 42 devastated Victoria.

She wore mourning for the remainder of her life.

Born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu.

Catholic nun.

Founder of the Missionaries of Charity.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

Her life became internationally associated with service to the poorest and sickest people in Calcutta and beyond.

Her legacy has also been debated and scrutinized, as consequential lives often are.

But few twentieth-century religious figures became more recognizable worldwide.

Singer.

Songwriter.

Half of the legendary Ashford & Simpson partnership.

Together with Nickolas Ashford, Simpson helped write some of Motown’s enduring songs and later became a successful recording artist in her own right.

🎹🎤

Singer.

Actress.

International pop star.

One of the most successful Mexican entertainers of her generation and widely known as the Queen of Latin Pop.

Actor best known to millions as Marvel’s virtually indestructible Luke Cage.

A rather useful talent to possess on one's birthday.

💪😏

Born August 26, 1980, today Chris Pine turns 46. (Biography)

Actor.

Captain.

Occasional prince.

For one generation of Star Trek fans, Pine is James T. Kirk, taking command of the Enterprise in the reboot film series.

For another audience, he is Steve Trevor opposite Wonder Woman.

And somewhere out there...

William Shatner is presumably checking the bridge logs.

🖖🚀

Also 46 today.

One of the most recognizable child actors in movie history.

Give an eight-year-old:

a large suburban house,

two incompetent burglars,

several household appliances,

and inadequate parental supervision...

and apparently you get a Christmas classic.

😂🏠

Kevin!

Actor.

Comedian.

Writer.

Producer.

From Gilmore Girls and Mike & Molly to Bridesmaids, Spy and a sprawling film career, McCarthy became one of the most successful comic performers of her generation.

Stand-up comedian.

Writer.

Former Saturday Night Live writer.

A performer capable of turning personal catastrophe, childhood memories and bizarre social observations into beautifully constructed comic stories.

Actor known for Teen Wolf, The Maze Runner films and an increasingly varied screen career.

Actor.

Singer.

Host.

Emmy winner.

Palmer began performing as a child and simply kept adding job descriptions.

Akeelah and the Bee.

Television.

Music.

Nope.

Hosting.

Comedy.

Apparently somebody forgot to tell Keke Palmer that one career was the usual limit.

😏

South Korean rapper, songwriter, producer and leader of (G)I-DLE.

One of today’s younger birthday figures and part of the increasingly global story of popular music.

Imagine looking through a lens...

and discovering an entire world nobody knew was there.

Leeuwenhoek constructed powerful single-lens microscopes and became one of the first people to observe microorganisms.

Bacteria.

Protozoa.

Microscopic life.

The invisible world suddenly had inhabitants.

🔬🦠

He is frequently called the Father of Microbiology.

Few discoveries have made humanity feel simultaneously larger...

and much, much smaller.

Philosopher.

Psychologist.

Teacher.

One of the founders of modern American psychology.

His work explored consciousness, habit, experience, religion and the workings of the human mind.

More than a century later, many of the questions James asked remain surprisingly alive.

Especially one:

Welcome to 2026, Professor.

We're still working on it.

🧠♾️

The Man of a Thousand Faces.

Before elaborate digital effects...

before sophisticated prosthetic departments...

Chaney transformed himself into unforgettable characters through makeup, physical performance and extraordinary endurance.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The Phantom of the Opera.

He helped define cinematic horror before the movies even learned to speak.

🎞️👻

Banker.

Industrialist.

Philanthropist.

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.

One of the wealthiest and most influential Americans of his era.

His art collection and philanthropy played a major role in establishing the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

British professional golfer who won both The Open Championship and the U.S. Open.

One of the significant figures of golf’s early international era.

Aviation pioneer turned extraordinary sailor.

Chichester completed a solo circumnavigation using the clipper route aboard Gipsy Moth IV.

He became a national hero in Britain.

Imagine looking at the entire planet and thinking:

"Yes. I believe I'll sail around that by myself."

⛵🌍

Some people apparently receive very different ideas on quiet afternoons.

In 1927, Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis alone from New York to Paris.

The first solo nonstop transatlantic flight made him one of the most famous people on Earth.

His later life was considerably more complicated and controversial, including political views that remain part of any complete assessment of him.

History rarely fits neatly into hero-shaped boxes.

But his aviation achievement permanently changed perceptions of what long-distance flight could accomplish.

Actor forever beloved as the magnificently pompous Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Knight possessed one of comedy’s great gifts:

the ability to make a character ridiculous...

without making him impossible to love.

Businessman who founded Victoria’s Secret.

His story later became an often-told case study in entrepreneurship, business decisions and how companies can grow far beyond the circumstances of their founding.

Singer with one of the defining pop voices of the 1980s.

And when those opening notes hit...

a generation still knows exactly what comes next.

🎤✨

She died unexpectedly at only 52.

One of Broadway’s most successful playwrights.

The Odd Couple.

Barefoot in the Park.

Plaza Suite.

Brighton Beach Memoirs.

Simon understood something precious about comedy:

Families can drive us completely insane...

and somehow remain the source of half our best stories.

🎭

For 35 years:

Barker became virtually synonymous with The Price Is Right.

But there is a particularly fitting coincidence today.

August 26 is International Dog Day.

And Barker spent decades ending his broadcasts by urging viewers to help control the pet population by having pets spayed or neutered.

He became an outspoken animal-rights advocate and donated substantially to animal causes.

🐕❤️

So on Dog Day...

we give Bob Barker an extra nod.

The price may have been right.

The cause mattered even more.

Consider the strange gathering August 26 gives us.

Lavoisier measured matter.

Leeuwenhoek discovered worlds inside droplets.

William James explored consciousness.

Mother Teresa explored service.

Lindbergh crossed an ocean through the air.

Chichester circled the world across the sea.

Lon Chaney transformed faces.

Tim Curry transformed himself into characters nobody forgot.

Neil Simon made audiences laugh at themselves.

Bob Barker turned daytime television into ritual.

And today's living celebrants continue adding chapters of their own.

Chris Pine.

Melissa McCarthy.

Macaulay Culkin.

Keke Palmer.

Thalía.

Valerie Simpson.

John Mulaney.

And more.

🎂🕯️

Birthdays remind us that a life begins before anyone knows what it will become.

Passings remind us that eventually...

the work is finished.

What remains afterward?

The discovery.

The performance.

The kindness.

The invention.

The laughter.

The controversy.

The questions.

The people influenced.

The little pieces of one life that continue traveling through other lives.

And today Tim Curry gives us a particularly appropriate final image.

The stage goes dark.

The performer leaves.

But somewhere tonight...

a theater screen will light up.

Someone will see Dr. Frank-N-Furter descend that elevator for the very first time.

And for that person...

🎭💋🕯️

Perhaps that is one small form of immortality available to artists.

The performance begins again.

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