On this Day... August 19

CEBU, Philippines – In 1931, the most successful jockey in history, Willie Shoemaker, was born, weighing in at only two and a half pounds. This handicap didn't stop "Willie the Shoe" from breaking the world records in his first full year of racing with no less than 388 winners. Since 1949, in fact, the 4-foot-11 ½-inch 98 pounder has ridden 30,000 races, winning 7,000 of them and a grand total of over $63 million. Spectacular even in defeat, he was leading the 1957 Kentucky Derby when, to the amazement of the crowd, he misjudged the finishing line and slowed up too early. When he got back into stride it was too late and he'd lost. The horse might have been named for him: it was called Gallant Man.

.In 1902, humorous poet Ogden Nash was born in Rye, New York. In his 40-year career, Nash, the man who penned such lines as "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker," wrote 20 volumes of verse, lyrics for two musicals, and several children's books. For a whole generation, wrote Russell Maloney for the New York Times, his "none-too-joyful humor" was "the alternative to simply lying down on the floor and screaming."

- from Today's the Day! By Jeremy Beadle

In Christian history -

. In 1886, Baptist clergyman Richard G. Spurling established the Christian Union in Monroe County, Tennessee. In 1923 this Pentecostal denomination changed its name to Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee).

- from This Day in Christian History

By William D. Blake

In the Philippines -

. In 1878, Manuel Luis Quezon was born in Baler, in the district of El Principe (present day Baler, Aurora). Quezon served as president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines from 1935 to 1944. In 1907, he was elected to the first Philippine Assembly where he served as majority floor leader and chairman of the committee on appropriations. He served as one of the Philippines' two resident commissioners to the U.S. House of Representatives, lobbying for the passage of the Philippine Autonomy Act or Jones Law. Quezon returned to Manila in 1916 to be elected into the Philippine Senate and later became Senate President, serving continuously for 19 years until 1935. He headed the first Independent Mission to the U.S. Congress in 1919 securing passage of the Tydings-McDuffie Independence Law in 1934. In 1935 Quezon won the Philippine's first national presidential election under the banner of the Nacionalista Party. After the Japanese invasion of the Philippines during World War II he evacuated to Corregidor, then the Visayas and Mindanao, and upon the invitation of the US government, was further evacuated to Australia and then to the United States, where he established the Commonwealth government in exile with headquarters in Washington, D.C. During his exile in the US, Manuel L. Quezon died of tuberculosis in Saranac Lake, New York on August 1, 1944. - www.kahimyang.info

In Cebu -

.In 1851, a Bishop's decree confirmed the establishment of Carmen, Cebu, as a parish. It was separated from the jurisdiction of Catmon and placed under the patronage of San Agustin Obispo y Doctor.

- from Cebuano Studies Center, University of San Carlos