1941 births

William Cordes "Rudy" Schlesinger (November 5, 1941 – August 13, 2023) was an American professional baseball player who had only one at bat in Major League Baseball as a pinch hitter for the 1965 Boston Red Sox.
Listed at 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m), 175 pounds (79 kg), Schlesinger batted and threw right-handed.
He spent much of his seven-year (1964–70) professional career in the Red Sox organization, although Boston would lose him on waivers once, trade him twice, and reacquire him twice in the space of four seasons.

Richard Benjamin Reese (born September 29, 1941) is an American former professional baseball player who played first base and outfield in the major leagues from 1964 through 1973 for the Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers. Born in Leipsic, Ohio, Reese threw and batted left-handed, stood 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m) tall and weighed 185 pounds (84 kg). He attended Deshler, Ohio, high school.
Reese's pro career began in the Detroit organization and he appeared in 59 games for the Tigers in his final MLB season in 1973, but he spent the bulk of his big-league tenure—807 games played—as a member of the Twins, who drafted him away from the Tigers in November 1962. In his finest season, 1969, Reese batted a career-best .322 in 132 games, with 16 home runs and 69 runs batted in, also personal bests. He tied for the American League lead in pinch hits with 13 in 1967. He is also the co-holder of the major league record for pinch-hit grand slam home runs in a career with three. One of those pinch-hit slams, on August 3, 1969, snapped the Baltimore Orioles' Dave McNally's consecutive win streak at 17, one short of the American League record.
Reese is also in the record books for two strikeouts: as the final out in Catfish Hunter's perfect game on May 8, 1968, and as Nolan Ryan's 383rd strikeout victim of the 1973 season (September 27), the still-standing single-season record, breaking Sandy Koufax's record of 382 in 1965.
In 866 games over ten seasons, Reese compiled a .253 batting average (512-for-2,020) with 248 runs, 73 doubles, 17 triples, 52 home runs, 245 RBI, 158 base on balls, 270 strikeouts, .312 on-base percentage and .384 slugging percentage. Defensively, he recorded a .992 fielding percentage at first base and left field. In the postseason, in the 1969 and 1970 American League Championship Series, he appeared in five games and hit .158 (3-for-19) with two runs batted in.
Reese went on to a career in the distilled spirits industry, retiring in 2003 as CEO of Jim Beam Brands headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, Illinois.

Karin Anny Hannelore Reinbold von Aroldingen (9 September 1941 – 5 January 2018) was a German ballet dancer. She danced as a soloist at the Frankfurt Opera Ballet before joining the New York City Ballet in 1962 after receiving a personal invitation from George Balanchine. She was named as one of Balanchine's main beneficiaries in his will. Von Aroldingen retired from New York City Ballet in 1984, having reached the rank of principal dancer in 1972. In her later life, she worked as a répétiteur for the Balanchine Trust, for which she was also a founder, staging his ballets for various companies.

Joel Anthony Crothers (January 28, 1941 – November 6, 1985) was an American actor. His credits primarily included stage and television work, including a number of soap opera roles, the best known being Miles Cavanaugh on The Edge of Night, whom he played for eight years. He was also known for his roles as Joe Haskell and Lt. Nathan Forbes on Dark Shadows, Ken Stevens #2 on The Secret Storm, and pianist/newspaper editor Julian Cannell on Somerset.

Douglas Calder Mason (30 September 1941 – 13 December 2004) was a Scottish policymaker, writer and antiquarian bookseller. He came to be known as the "father of the poll tax".

William Pitt Root (born 1941 Austin, Minnesota) is an American poet.He was raised in Fort Myers, Florida.He studied at the University of Washington, and University of North Carolina at Greensboro.He was Tucson Poet Laureate from 1997 to 2002, and taught at Hunter College.
He was a US/UK Exchange Artist, Rockefeller Foundation fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and an NEA fellow.His work appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harpers, The Nation, Commonweal, The American Poetry Review, Tri@uarterly, and Poetry. He is poetry editor of Cutthroat Magazine.He is married to poet Pamela Uschuk; they live near Durango, Colorado and Tucson Arizona

Karl Otto Kassulke (March 20, 1941 – October 27, 2008) was a professional American football player.
Kassulke graduated from Drake, where he starred as a safety. He played 10 seasons in the National Football League (NFL), all with the Minnesota Vikings. Kassulke started in Super Bowl IV, where he and teammate Earsell Mackbee missed a tackle on Otis Taylor on the final touchdown of the game, late in the third quarter. The next season, he was selected to the Pro Bowl.
On July 24, 1973, Kassulke suffered a motorcycle accident on the way to training camp that left him paralyzed from the waist down.After his playing career, Kassulke worked with Wings Outreach, a Christian Ministry to the disabled.Kassulke was immortalized in NFL lore by NFL Films' official highlight film for Super Bowl IV. Kansas City Chiefs coach Hank Stram, who was wired for sound by NFL Films executive producer Ed Sabol, noted the confusion in the Vikings' defense due to the Chiefs' shifting offense and quipped, "Kassulke was running around there like it was a Chinese fire drill".

Indus Arthur (born Indus Jo Saugstad; April 28, 1941 – December 29, 1984) was a 1960s film and television actress.

David Lynn Selby (born February 5, 1941) is an American film, television, and stage actor. He is best known for playing Quentin Collins on the daytime soap Dark Shadows (1968–71) and Richard Channing on the prime-time soap Falcon Crest (1982–90). Selby also had prominent roles in the television series Flamingo Road (1981–82) and the feature film Raise the Titanic (1980).

Earl Thomas Conley (October 17, 1941 – April 10, 2019) was an American country music singer-songwriter. Between 1980 and 2003, he recorded ten studio albums, including seven for RCA Records. In the 1980s and into the 1990s, Conley also charted more than 30 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, of which 18 reached Number One. His 18 Billboard Number One country singles during the 1980s were the third most by any artist in any genre during that decade, after Alabama and Ronnie Milsap.