Born on February 14, 1995

U Nu died on February 14, 1995. He'd been Burma's first prime minister after independence, serving from 1948 to 1962. He tried to build a democratic Buddhist state. He nationalized industries, made Buddhism the state religion, and banned the killing of cattle. The military overthrew him in 1962. Ne Win put him under house arrest for five years. When he got out, he fled to Thailand and tried to organize armed resistance. It failed. He returned in 1980, lived quietly in Rangoon. By then Burma was Myanmar, and the junta had crushed what he'd tried to build. He was 87. The country still isn't free.

Michael V. Gazzo died on February 14, 1995. He wrote *A Hatful of Rain* at 32 — the first Broadway play about heroin addiction. It ran for 389 performances in 1955. Critics called it exploitative. Addicts wrote him letters saying he'd gotten it right. He was nominated for an Oscar twenty years later for playing Frankie Pentangeli in *The Godfather Part II*. That Senate hearing scene — "I don't know nothin' about that" — he ad-libbed half of it. Coppola kept the camera rolling. Gazzo understood something about loyalty and betrayal that you can't teach.